


ENCORE//DISSONANCE

by vanitaslaughing



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (hexatheon voice) no rest for the wicked. or the good ones., (hexatheon voice) or something like a normal life for the blind and depressed ones., Dead People, F/M, M/M, One Jerk And Another Bigger Jerk, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reincarnation, Road Trips, Singing, Spirits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-14 08:33:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16489229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: ON HIATUSNoctis dies.When he wakes up next he's stuck in a place devoid of anything together with Ardyn, and is told to help purge the last remnants of darkness, to return form to this empty void. But to find them, someone on the other side has to help them.Ardyn? He's furious, positively disinterested, but still along for the ride.Ignis faints.When he wakes up next he's with an orphan girl who hesitantly tells him she is Lunafreya who all but awoke with a start when the sun rose and they are sent on a trip around the world to find where something dark festers. They are to send the souls to the beyond with a song and a smile.Luna? She will sing, loud enough to drown out the chaos in her and Ignis' hearts.





	1. INTRO: those the gods weep for

The first thing he felt was that ever-agonising sheer cold that seemed to only intensify in utter silence.

It made him snap his eyes open in fear—the last thing he felt was the hot agony of death, the even hotter agony of falling into pieces once his destiny was fulfilled. There wasn’t supposed to be _anything._ It was supposed to be _over._

But now that his eyes were open, he realised there was absolutely nothing. Nothing. Not a glimmer of light, not the strange effervescent shimmer that accompanied the power of the Crystal, that told of the powers that Reflection held. It was empty, formless—pitch dark. As if the light had vanished and with it had gone everything else; form, matter, substance. The only thing that stood out was his own body, strangely translucent now that he looked at it proper, and nothing else.

“Finally awake, are you?”

A cold shiver ran down his spine at the icy tone and the familiar voice.

“No way,” he croaked slowly, and refused to turn around. If he didn’t acknowledge this further, perhaps it could be undone. Perhaps the other would vanish into the vast black abyss that surrounded him, go up in embers or shatter into countless tiny pieces of soul again.

A snort, and all hopes that this was just an illusion shattered like fine glass. “Look, I’m about as thrilled about this as you doubtlessly are, but I’m afraid we don’t get a say in the matter. Turn around, Noctis; not acknowledging family is bad but not acknowledging gods, now _that’s_ a fine way to awaken as vengeful revenant.”

He heard a displeased sigh, and Noctis Lucis Caelum, last king of Lucis, turned around to come face to face with the High Messenger Gentiana—and the Accursed.

They had both shattered, in a sense. Noctis had barely managed to hold himself together to watch two thousand years of hatred and preparation came to a high point; two weapons ready to strike, only for something else to intervene and shatter them both. Noctis had _felt_ how Ardyn came apart, and mere moments later he himself had lost himself in the glow of what Ardyn had called the Beyond. Strange, otherworldly. Getting dimmer and dimmer until nothing but darkness remained and he felt every fibre of his soul being torn apart, scattering in the endless abyss and nothing remained. No consciousness, no thought, definitely no emotion or feeling. Noctis held no grudge, Ardyn’s grudge left him in that split moment before he came apart entirely.

Indeed, Ardyn looked rather annoyed, but not at Noctis. Otherwise the man seemed devoid of any other emotion or expression; a stark difference to the peculiarly colourful character he had posed as before he revealed who he was in Altissia. Even following these events, Ardyn remained expressive even if all he showed was fury and hatred—Noctis had never seen hatred turn someone’s face into anything more than a grotesque mask.

Gentiana—Shiva—meanwhile had her eyes closed and her expression was as unreadable as always. He had not spent much time with her, but she always smiled at him whenever they came face to face. Though he owed most of that to…

“Luna?”

“Not here, I’m afraid,” Ardyn drawled and Noctis only just now noticed that the man was sitting. Legs crossed and arms equally crossed; if he didn’t look that annoyed he might have looked… flippant. Almost offended. “Or rather, we ought to be glad the Oracle is not here.”

“Because you—“

“Whether I killed her or not; irrelevant, my dear Noctis. Now then, Glacian. Do me the honour and fill him in and finally tell me what _delightful_ place this is, please?”

Gentian moved slightly; her brows were furrowed slightly but she did not give Ardyn the satisfaction of reacting to his obvious jab. Instead she took a step forwards, and for a second Noctis saw the void around them flash brilliant blue. For a split moment he saw where they were supposed to be. The throne room, in front of the stairs. A blue echo of the place he remembered rather than the place he had actually walked into in the end, moments before—

For not more than a heartbeat he felt like the coldness of this empty void was replaced by the white-hot agony of being torn apart once again, and for a second he saw glittering embers float up from where he stood.

It was Gentiana who placed a cold hand on his cheek, and the spell was broken. Had she only taken a step? Had she crossed this distance in that moment that felt like an eternity he spent in a throne room that wasn’t even there? As soon as that cold hand put his feet firmly on the invisible and endlessly black ground, he felt like he was thrown back in time. Twenty-two years in the past, and suddenly he was that kid looking up from behind a book while sitting in a wheelchair, and Gentiana was not the Glacian in a less divine disguise, but that strange but kind woman that always smiled at him and the other people in the manor.

“Some wounds were left to fester—and those who were to be granted rest after being returned from this void are stuck there still. Thus we would ask of you, once again, travel. Find that which festers, and cleanse it.”

Ardyn rolled his eyes and finally uncrossed his arms—only to throw them up in a wide shrug. “ _Cleanse it?_ Last time you asked that of someone, they became a vengeful revenant.”

Gentiana put her forehead against his, and a cold shudder ran down Noctis’ spine again. “We can return soul to its previous state if shattered, but only if it is cleansed of its impurities or pure to begin with. That is how we collected the pieces of you and the Immortal Accursed, to act in our stead.”

“No. Absolutely not,” Ardyn hissed, and Noctis found himself agreeing with the man. It was supposed to be _over._ That word and feeling echoed throughout his entire being, tore at the very fabric that made him up, nearly made him burst—

Gentiana put the other hand on his other cheek and cupped his face, her forehead still leaning against his. He saw a tremble go across her face. “Please. We would not ask for such if we had any chance of doing this ourselves. But this void you see, this wall of agony that keeps you from the throne room; we cannot repair that which the Scourge ate. So we ask of you, find that which festers, and make it manifest in the void beyond.”

For a moment she was quiet, and then she let go of Noctis. He saw the ghost of a smile on her face, and saw Ardyn’s irritation only surge.

“How, you ask?”

No, no one had spoken. It was quiet in this empty void—Noctis’ heart did not beat. He was dead. Barely more than a figment of what had been a man once, and so was Ardyn for that matter. Silence reigned in this dark realm that was the beyond.

“That is why we returned you, my lady.”

“Lady?” Accursed and Chosen glared at each other when they both repeated that word at the same time, but said nothing else.

Gentiana’s form started to blur. The contours vanished, seemed to melt into the goddess of ice. For a split second the void lit up in brilliant crystalline blue once more, but this time a few vague outlines remained. Noctis figured that this was where the door to the throne room would have been, and these lines that barely made any sense right now remained outside the door; the Glacian firmly between them. He narrowed his eyes a little—these figures looked vaguely human. One tall and the other small; an adult and a… child?

“Force them into being in the empty void by singing them their final march, by singing of better times, of bitter times, of the sweet and the sour. Vanquish the rancour that darkens this realm of the in-between. For that, we need you four.”

Again, a quiet pause. Ardyn had closed his eyes and Noctis _saw_ how his lips quivered. This man was about to start _screaming_ in anger, the frustration and annoyance finally enough to overwhelm him. But before Ardyn could have his proper outburst, the Glacian turned her head to the outlines.

“No, this wall you cannot break until Eos breathes again. Towards the ocean, a soul lingers in melancholic remembrance. Beyond the ocean, one despairs at the goal of a journey. On a continent so different from this, four rage in obscurity and grieve in solitude. And three more await judgement on this very continent before this wall breaks.” She tilted her head a little, a sad smile on her face. “That is why you remembered, yes. To sing—to make that which lingers materialise, so that on the other side, so that the Chosen and the Accursed can defeat the rancour. Is that not what you always wanted to do, Lunafreya? Sing?”

* * *

He awoke with a throbbing headache. For a long moment he was uncertain where he was, what he was doing here—who he even was. But then it came all flooding back in, and Ignis Scientia sat up with a strangled cry.

He heard someone stagger backwards with a surprised gasp, and the tried to figure out whose voice that was. It sounded too young for anyone he knew; Cindy’s voice was more mature, Aranea’s was much deeper, Iris sounded less terrified whenever someone suddenly started moving again. He heard the flutter of a skirt or a dress in the breeze; had someone opened a window while he was out?

“Who’s there?” His voice was strangely raw, and Ignis raised a hand to his temple.

He froze when he felt something wet. And all of a sudden, the overwhelming smell of blood invaded his senses, made him gag all over again just as it had made him gag when the sun had risen for the first time in ten years and they had walked into the throne room.

Whoever it was in this room with him took a few hurried steps to his side—Ignis flinched when he heard a murmur close to his injured side.

“I-I’m sorry.” That definitely was a girl’s voice, not a day older than twelve at most. He felt her move again, but she hesitated a moment. “Are… you not going to ask what I’m doing? I could be drawing a weapon.”

“First, you underestimate me,” he croaked, “and second, someone drawing a weapon sounds different. They behave different.”

A soft laugh echoed through the room before the Lucian throne room. “You’re a strange man, Ignis.”

He closed his eyes and breathed out shakily. “Now you have me at a disadvantage. You would be…?”

“Diana,” the girl whispered, “though that wasn’t always my name.”

He vaguely remembered a girl that should be around eleven years old now. She had been born during the light’s last fitful throes against the dark, to parents who had either decided to leave their daughter somewhere in the dark or to parents who were killed on the way to Lestallum. It was hard to tell because people found the girl completely on her own, with no signs of a struggle anywhere nearby—and instead of condemning her to a fate worse than death out there in the wilds, the hunters brought her to Lestallum. She’d grown up amongst an entire gaggle of children from every corner of the world who had also lost their parents, and she was one of those that did not get adopted at any point. Despite all that, Diana remained bright for her age but not really talkative, even when she and a bunch of the remaining orphans went to Insomnia to see if their parents eventually washed up there.

“And what are you doing in the Citadel, Diana?”

She shuffled awkwardly, likely brushing her hair behind her ear and trying to think of something to say.

“Aren’t there any people standing guard at the entrance?”

“Not at the eastern one, no. And climbing up a building’s… not that hard.”

Ignis sighed—that explained the light breeze that definitely hadn’t been here before. But the other thing that hadn’t been here before…. Ignis turned his head slightly towards where he _knew_ the entrance to the throne room was. They hadn’t rebuilt this room yet at his request; why he couldn’t really remember but there was definitely something about not wanting to part with something that was as broken inside as he felt. He had come here to check if he was ready to say his final goodbye to Noctis and let them rebuild this place as a tomb of sorts that people could visit.

But he vaguely remembered trying to reach for the door, and something repelling him, sending him flying and knocking him against a pillar. That would explain the wound on his head and why he had been lying there unconscious. But… how?

She had noticed him staring at the door by now, and she shuffled some more. “There’s… a force-field or something. It shimmers slightly in the sunlight, but you can feel it’s powerful. I guess that’s why you were on the ground.”

Now that she mentioned it, he did feel a strange pulse emanating from the door. He quietly cursed himself for not noticing earlier.

“It kinda… appeared this morning.”

“Are the people concerned?”

“I dunno. They just think it’s the Wall or an echo of the Wall, keeping us out because King Noctis is or isn’t happy in the beyond.”

He heard the sharp click of heels against the floor, and turned his head into the sound’s direction.

“It is a wound, festering enough to affect the living world,” a clear voice said, and Ignis sighed. The High Messenger being here could not mean anything good—the gods had been silent since the night dawn returned. After their grand entrance and Bahamut and Shiva’s interference in the fight against Ifrit, none of the deities had made themselves known in any way. People said that they left the world together with the King of Light, and Ignis had believed it himself. Until now, at least.

Still he opened his eyes. “Could you elaborate?”

But Gentiana said nothing, only walked closer. He heard the distinct sound of someone crouching down, and the girl gasped a little. He could only guess what was happening, and it frustrated him.

“Have you awoken, or have you always known?”

“I remembered when the sun rose,” the girl whispered, the shyness from earlier nearly gone from her voice. “And since then I’ve been waiting because I knew this gift would not come freely. This gift of living again, this gift of being able to stand by him in his last moments. And here you are.”

“Silly girl,” there was a warm fondness in the High Messenger’s voice, “we will not force you to die for us again.”

Ignis cleared his throat, and he heard that someone turned to look at him at the very least.

“Again, you’ve got me at a disadvantage.” By the gods, his head hurt. This situation wasn’t making it better the slightest. “Diana?”

An awkward shuffle. She was clearly wringing her hands nervously, and from the sounds of it looking at Gentiana a few times as if seeking… permission for something. Eventually the Glacian in disguise nodded, and the girl let out a long sigh.

And all of a sudden, he felt something move close to his bloody temple. It took him quite a lot of willpower to not flinch away immediately or to not start screaming in the presence of the goddess. But Shiva had not moved at all; this was all the girl by herself.

“You don’t look a gift Chocobo in the beak, I suppose,” she said slowly, and sounded so much _older_ than she actually was. “I never was alone for long enough to… test if it still worked.” A deep breath, and the next words chilled Ignis to the bone. “Blessed stars of life and light… d-deliver us… from….” She dropped her hand, and shook her head. “I should have guessed as much.”

Ignis was holding his breath. Of all cruel jokes that the universe could play, this was the one they chose in the end.

“Lady Lunafreya.”

She was wiping something off her face, and his strange disappointment immediately turned to anger. She had already given everything, including her chance at happiness for the gods and their prophecies. He could _see_ Ravus collapsing in front of her again, the surprisingly soft and gentle words that left the man who he had fought nearly to the death just moments before. She hadn’t rested for ten years, she had been there when Noctis needed her. He had expected that despite all the heartbreak, she and Noctis would be happy together now.

“Hasn’t she done enough?” He hadn’t meant to hiss at the goddess, but Diana—Lunafreya—flinched. “Not even eternal rest you grant her?”

He knew he wasn’t intimidating the slightest. Ignis Scientia was, by any means, a man the dawn broke. Now that it was light out, now that Noctis was dead, he had relapsed into being near useless. Everyone said that it was just the grief, but Ignis knew better than that. He was useful for making plans and the like, but not for much else. He was just a sad, blind man—Gentiana was the goddess of ice incarnate.

Still, she sighed softly. “Some wounds were left to fester—and those who were to be granted rest after being returned from this void are stuck there still. Thus we would ask of you, once again, travel. Find that which festers, and cleanse it.”

There was a small pause which Ignis took to get up and position himself between the goddess and the girl. Gentiana meanwhile moved, and he made a point in keeping between her and Lunafreya; until finally the goddess stopped once she stood by the sealed door to the throne room.

“We can return soul to its previous state if shattered, but only if it is cleansed of its impurities or pure to begin with. That is how we collected the pieces of you and the Immortal Accursed, to act in our stead.”

Lunafreya gasped and peeked out behind him, at the door and the goddess as she spoke. “You can’t mean—“

“Noctis,” Ignis whispered.

If there was one thing that Ignis and Lunafreya had in common, then it was being devoted to Noctis. Different ways, but effectively the same emotion kept them going—unconditional love. It had taken Lunafreya’s life in the end because it was her destiny, it had effectively taken Ignis’ sight rather than the Ring of the Lucii. Not only did the gods not let Lunafreya have her well-earned rest, now they also forced Noctis into this again, wherever he was.

He tried not to think about what Ardyn being mentioned implied.

He felt a flare of power that the wall surrounding the door seemed to emanate, and Lunafreya behind him cringed.

“Please. We would not ask for such if we had any chance of doing this ourselves. But this void you see, this wall of agony that keeps you from the throne room; we cannot repair that which the Scourge ate. So we ask of you, find that which festers, and make it manifest in the void beyond.”

Ignis curled his hands into fists, but Lunafreya behind him took a deep breath. “But… how?”

“How, you ask? That is why we returned you, my lady. Force them into being in the empty void by singing them their final march, by singing of better times, of bitter times, of the sweet and the sour. Vanquish the rancour that darkens this realm of the in-between. For that, we need you four.”

Lunafreya took a deep breath. She muttered something that sounded like a very hesitant agreement—and added something that sounded a lot like ‘but only if you let them rest afterwards’.

Ignis meanwhile wasn’t that convinced. He crossed his arms with a huff. “So then, we start with this wall? Any way through you can tells us about, Glacian, or are we on our own with that?”

“No,” Gentiana said, “this wall you cannot break until Eos breathes again.” Ignis narrowed his eyes at her, but she continued without taking a moment to acknowledge him. “Towards the ocean, a soul lingers in melancholic remembrance. Beyond the ocean, one despairs at the goal of a journey. On a continent so different from this, four rage in obscurity and grieve in solitude. And three more await judgement on this very continent before this wall breaks.”

“Is that,” the poor girl sounded like she was about to start crying, “why I remembered everything?”

“That is why you remembered, yes. To sing—to make that which lingers materialise, so that on the other side, so that the Chosen and the Accursed can defeat the rancour. Is that not what you always wanted to do, Lunafreya? Sing?”

Again a mutter, but this time she sounded so upset that Ignis went from having his eyes narrowed to letting out a displeased snarl of a sort. Alas, before he could say anything, the goddess vanished in a burst of sudden cold, leaving nothing but the warm afternoon breeze to blow in through the window and Ignis and this girl who was a reborn Lunafreya standing there side by side.

Gods, he was _furious._

* * *

“Bold of her to assume I’ll be doing anything for her and her ilk.”

Noctis only buried his face in his hands.

The vague outlines had vanished a moment ago, but not before he made certain that they really had no substance in this place. Shiva had left them in the dark as well, quite literally. There was nothing, an infinitely vast and inky black abyss that he and Ardyn were stuck in. No doors or walls, no hills or trees. There was just absolutely nothing; this place was devoid of life or anything that _defined_ it. Even Ardyn—and by extension likely Noctis himself—lacked substance. A ghost, quite literally, as cliched as that sounded.

“Could you. Could you perhaps _explain_ what this is supposed to be?”

“What, since Shiva didn’t?”

He really wanted to draw a weapon and impale this man all over again, but reducing his fellow void-inmate to nothing but shattered remnants of a soul likely was counterproductive. Not that Ardyn himself was productive to begin with.

Much to Noctis’ surprise, his trusty old sword answered his call. In a flash of blue sparks it reappeared in his hands as always had; as if the Crystal hadn’t spent all its power at his behest, to sweep across the planet to _cleanse._ The very same thing that Shiva now told him to do again.

The man still sitting with his legs crossed only raised an eyebrow as he looked at the weapon. Perhaps he was awaiting a strike, and Noctis _really_ wanted to drive his sword into that smug face that only caused him grief when he was alive. But the longer he thought about it, the more ridiculous it became.

After what felt like an eternity in the dark and silent, he also sat down on what he assumed was the ground.

“So much for resting in peace this time, eh?”

Ardyn only rolled his eyes.

“Come on, man, help me here. It’s just you and me and… whatever this is. And I guess Luna and someone else on the other side?”

Ardyn rolled his eyes again.

“So, what’s it we gotta do? Cleanse? But what? There’s nothing.”

“You,” Ardyn began after a moment of silence, “are an exceedingly bad listener, Noctis. We cannot do anything until the other side does something first. Until then, all we have is the abyss and ourselves. If either side goes through with this nonsense. I cannot speak for you and the others, but I would quite prefer not to.”

Noctis buried his face in his hands again with a groan. Ardyn was right. All they could do now was wait.

He missed the distant glimmer because of that.

* * *

At first, he had wanted to throw a tantrum and say no to this endeavour. It was Lunafreya who made the decision in the end, and found the right words to make him agree.

“I can’t do this on my own, Ignis.”

She really couldn’t. Diana was a small child, Lunafreya was in that child’s body. Even though the sun had risen, travelling the planet on your own as a kid was dangerous. Not as dangerous as it used to be, but still dangerous enough to warrant at least someone else along for the ride. Ignis had tried to argue that a blind man would not be much help, but she’d only laughed a little.

“You know more about the world than I do. Any experience is welcomed on a trip like this.”

In the end, they settled for sitting on the floor together and trying to work out where the goddess would have them go first.

“By the sea, she said. Galdin Quay, perhaps?”

Ignis had closed his eyes and hummed. “Perhaps. But there’s a lot of places by the sea that would work.”

“We could always check them one by one until we find the right one? It’s not like… they gave us a time limit?”

She had a point.

In the end, Ignis and Lunafreya agreed to get to Galdin somehow and then check along the coast as they went, if only to see what this was all about.


	2. MOVEMENT I: the shanty of the survivor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> towards the ocean, a soul lingers in melancholic remembrance
> 
> in the dark, sulphur flame beckons through stillness

A year had come and gone since the sun had risen again for the first time, but every once in a while, Luna stopped to marvel at how beautiful the world was in sunlight. Insomnia was still mostly in ruins, but quite a few parts of it had been restored. She turned around and looked up at the Citadel when she followed Ignis out. The sun, reflected in the broken and the repaired windows, shimmering softly on that magical wall that should have raised more of a commotion in her opinion. The Crystal’s magic had faded along with the rising sun; the Glaives that were still in Lestallum at the time first noting that something felt different. She remembered how Nyx had not even realised that his magic had died along with King Regis—but these men and women realised that something was leaving.

Then again, it had been her desperate plea to the gods and the powers that governed this world that had called the glaives of rulers past to Altissia that day—it had been remnants of her own power that had reawakened this ancient magic for as long as darkness persisted once these weapons returned whence they came. It seemed only right that with the end of the Crystal’s power as it was, this strange combination of her bloodline’s magic and the Crystal would also fade.

It made her awakening in that very moment even more ridiculous. She’d been there. She had made certain that the Wall that Ardyn had raised would not stop Noctis in his path. Had been there when Noctis unleashed his power—and then was swept away, only to open her eyes in Lestallum as a child born in the dark.

She had wanted to scream that moment. Instead of screaming, people later told her—told Diana—that she had watched the sun rise with tears streaming down her face. As if she remembered sunlight despite having been born when it had already become a commodity that would soon vanish from the world. Luna could believe the crying part; she had been disoriented and so very, very angry. She had said that she would be there. She had waited for so long—and now the gods had the gall to tell her that she technically had been reborn as this girl who had lived a different life before all this?

She narrowed her eyes when the glare from some window hit her in the face.

Diana was about to turn eleven years old, a kid who never once met her parents but who had grown up as happily as children could in the endless dark with no family to speak of. Not talkative but very clever for her age, shy to a fault and very optimistic. If there was one person in the world who believed that her parents were still alive, it was Diana.

Or, well, Luna herself now. Except that she knew her parents were long dead. Her brother was dead. The man she loved was dead, too. She had nothing, and even the ruins of a life were gone now that the world was rebuilding.

She vaguely remembered this part of the city. Nyx had driven through here like a madman, knuckles white as he clung to that steering wheel like it kept him bound to reality.

Ignis eventually stopped after a few minutes, next to what looked like a collapsed highway that led away from the Citadel district. Considering the way it looked, either one of the empire’s Daemons had ploughed through here, or a part of the Old Wall had risen at Nyx’s behest.

He stopped at some point, where he likely knew that the road didn’t continue. It was a field of scattered debris and broken roads, but Ignis turned around.

“I’ll call you Diana if there’s other people around, if that’s okay with you?”

“… Yes, of course.” She messed with her hair a little. Blonde and wavy, a little past her shoulders; so everything was almost the same. “I don’t doubt there’s a few children called Lunafreya or Luna around, but… discretion.”

Ignis nodded. “Very well. There is one last thing.” He looked so _serious,_ just as Noctis had always described him in their little letters and messages. The scars just added to that serious look, despite the fact he couldn’t see. “You know that much, but the people believe that the gods _abandoned them_. If we go around saying that we are on a mission given to us by the Glacian, not only will they finally pronounce me a complete nutjob gone mad because of grief, but also will likely put you back where Diana came from. That is, back into an orphanage here in Insomnia.”

He was right, of course. The Hexatheon had vanished just as magic had; the Archaean never returned to the Disc of Cauthess, the Hydraean never rose again, the Draconian remained as absent as ever, the Glacian’s corpse was as unresponsive as before, the Fulgurian did not split boats that came too close to Angelgard in twain with thunder, and the Infernian was as dead as he had been since the Fall of Solheim.

“I… see. But there are plenty of people who know _you._ ” Ignis closed his eyes when she said that. “What do we tell them if they ask you about it?”

For a moment, Ignis remained quiet. She saw how he was grinding his teeth before finding an answer that didn’t sound like complete nonsense. “We tell them… we’re looking for your parents.”

“My…?”

“Diana’s. We never did find their bodies anywhere. No one ever came to ask for a girl named Diana. We cannot say if they are really dead, and quite a few people reunited after dawn despite not having seen each other and considered each other dead for ten lousy years.”

She crossed her arms. “That’s all nice and so on, but why… are you with me?”

“Children are not supposed to travel on their own? And… well. Quite a few people have been telling me to leave my office. The reconstruction plans are finalised and only need to be set in motion; I’ve got nothing better to do.”

He likely didn’t add that leaving this city sounded more appealing than wasting away in it.

Other than the serious look, this Ignis looked nothing like the man Noctis always talked about. There was absolutely nothing sharp about the way he held himself; Ignis was slightly slouched. He looked _tired_ , complete with a haircut that looked like it hadn’t really seen a scissor in ages. It fell into his face, though it didn’t cover that scar he had earned himself in Altissia for his hubris; the same hubris that had cost Nyx his life in Insomnia. Luna knew enough about Noctis’ friends to tell that Ignis was not in good condition. A year after dawn, and he lived with the shadows of a past that many people didn’t know the whole story of. And those who did….

“Shouldn’t we ask for help with this? Gladiolus, Prompto, someone from the Crownsguard?”

Ignis stood there for a moment before suddenly turning his back to her. He took a step forwards, then turned to the left side and used his cane to find a bit of debris. He slowly sat down on it and deflated.

“There’s no Crownsguard, Lady Lunafreya. We officially disbanded a week after dawn. Sure, I could ask them for help, but Gladio’s busy in the city, and Prompto’s out somewhere in the field… With no crown to protect, what do we need the Crownsguard for? Or the Kingsglaive for that matter.”

That made sense, as much as she hated admitting that.

If there were a guard like this in Tenebrae, she was rather certain that they would have disbanded, though they would have kept the title and come together once a year to remember her death—and hers alone. As far as history was concerned, her mother was an unfortunate victim of the war and an Oracle who did things, certainly, but nothing to be worth remembered for. Lunafreya Nox Fleuret was worth being remembered, as figurehead of a tragic love, as a sacrifice for the dawn just as Noctis was heralded as nowadays.

That the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive would scatter like this after their last king died as he did really only made sense. But strangely enough, it hurt. Though it likely didn’t hurt her as much as it hurt Ignis. He had spent his entire life in service to the crown, had spent ten years as part of the Kingsglaive and gone into the destroyed city as the last king’s personal Crownsguard.

The man sighed and stood back up.

“Well then. To Galdin Quay, shall we?”

Luna blinked a few times. “And how?”

Ignis only laughed for a moment. He genuinely sounded amused, then crossed his arms. “With the bus, of course. Like any good Lucian citizen who cannot drive.”

* * *

The silence here was oppressive, all-consuming. There wasn’t a place anywhere on Eos that compared to how quiet this place was. He reckoned it had something to do with the lack of a heartbeat anywhere—after all, this was a place where nothing lived. There was no chaos that the living created, there was not a shred of so-called everyday issues. Just a vast, pitch dark abyss that continued on for all eternity. There was no way of telling where north and south were, no telling what time of the day it was.

To be quite honest, it were the perfect conditions.

If only it weren’t for dear Noctis pacing around mumbling to himself.

Ardyn had learned how to be patient no matter how desperately he wanted to drive a weapon into his distant relatives at any give time. Truth be told he’d wanted this to be over and to be tossed into a vast abyss like this—on his own. He’d not once asked to be thrown into a situation like this, and the fact that the gods had the _gall_ to ask for anything like a favour, let alone have him spend some energy to do something that they wanted was outrageous and hilarious at the same time. Noctis, dearest Noctis, of course wanted to do what they wanted him to do. That was what made him such a nice little tool for the divine in the end; no matter how much he went through, his father’s teachings and Lunafreya had ensured that he would march to his own death with his head held high. No matter how much he wanted to live in a peaceful world, preferably with all his friends and his darling Oracle by his side.

He had, of course, made certain that nothing like that could ever happen. By removing Lunafreya he had at least made certain that Noctis would impale him with extreme prejudice. Honestly, he could have lived with being tied up in a dungeon and being stabbed, sliced open and in half, strangled maybe, mutilated in any way, shape, or form, for the rest of eternity. Not that he would have _lived,_ of course. But this infuriating little princeling had had the guts to rise as king after all.

He’d almost wanted to congratulate him for that when he finally came to put an end to this mess, the end that Ardyn had craved through all these layers of spite and hatred.

Right now, however, he kept sitting still until finally his nerves _snapped_ for the first time in a millennium at the very least. He jumped to his feet, _yanked_ Noctis backwards and made a point in keeping a solid grasp on the other man’s shirt when he forced him to turn around.

“By everything you consider holy and just, _stop pacing._ You’re driving me _insane.”_

“If I had a car and built a literal fucking brick wall I called ‘insanity’, I could be driving you _into_ insanity! But there’s absolutely _nothing around,_ so let go of me!”

Not exactly the dignified speech of a king, honestly, but Ardyn snorted and let go. As much as he craved the silence again, there was nothing to be done since Noctis was clearly throwing a fit over this nonsense. Might as well let the child martyr of the Hexatheon continue his little fit. Even if it annoyed the hell out of Ardyn himself.

He’d dealt with worse children throwing worse tantrums.

And all things considered, Noctis would be easy enough to handle. They hated each other—there was nothing that a good old brawl wouldn’t fix. Perhaps knocking him out would return the eerie silence of the beyond that he had craved for so long back.

* * *

She hadn’t really watched a lot of the world pass her by in a window. Most of her life she had spent locked into Fenestala Manor and forlornly staring out of the windows when neither her brother nor Gentiana were around to keep her distracted. By the time she had been put on an airship for the first time she had managed to rise to Oracle and was heralded by the gods. And by the final time she was stuffed on an airship against her will, it had been her brother—back then with both his arms—who had made certain that she couldn’t try escaping. It had also been her brother, this time with one arm and one metallic thing that looked so right on this man she could barely call her brother any longer, who had offered her a ride on it out of Altissia, moments before her body nearly failed her and he forced her to sit down.

But watching the countryside pass by outside the bus window was kind of fascinating.

She’d even stopped caring about looking sort of ridiculous—this body was that of an eleven year old leaving Insomnia for the first time since the sun rose. Thus Luna made certain to loudly enjoy this trip—she certainly wasn’t the only kid under fourteen on this bus, and most of them were also just as, if not more excited than her.

Ignis’ patience really surprised her. He kept sitting there with an almost serene smile on his face, his head slightly turned into her direction and his unseeing eyes closed. Whenever she pointed out something he knew exactly which landmark she was talking about, and after about two hours she wondered if he was a book rather than a human. He knew… quite a lot.

But after spending a moment thinking about it, she realised that he only sounded like a book because he had likely spent most of his life only reading about this in a book. And by the time he got there himself, he was on the run from the empire along with the missing heir to the Lucian throne. A man with a price attached to his head.

The effects of the dark still showed. When she had passed through here on her way out of Insomnia and into Duscae, there hadn’t been that many jagged rock formations. She noticed that there sometimes were deep gashes in the rock; signs of heavy swords cleaving through the rock or hard claws raking through it. She was rather certain that one rock even still had a decade-old bloodstain on it, something that the rare but heavy showers in this particular part of Leiden had not managed to wash away yet.

Eventually the bus stopped, and Ignis tugged on her sleeve. “Come on, time to hop off. Sitting that long is not good for circulation.”

She looked out of the window again—Hammerhead.

Luna followed him, her dress swaying in the sudden gust that went through the station. They had certainly tried to make Hammerhead look less like a fortified pit stop on the way to Insomnia from Lestallum, but some of the charm she’d heard it had had before the decade of darkness was definitely missing. Quite a few former Glaives had decided to settle there instead of Insomnia or going back to Lestallum or anywhere else in Lucis, which made it a small village a year after the sun had risen. Cid Sophiar, still alive and kicking, often commented that this was definitely not something he’d ever expected to happen to his little garage in the middle of nowhere.

His granddaughter certainly seemed pleased about it, though.

It was said granddaughter that was waving to Ignis. “Heya! Good t’see ya, Ignis!”

“And it’s good to see you too, Cindy. Is Prompto around, or is he on one of his countryside trips for the magazine he works for?”

Ignis had briefed her. Prompto was one of the people who settled in Hammerhead, apparently following something that Noctis had said to him in Insomnia. Something about holding the people he cared about close and never letting them go. The man had sighed as he said that Prompto had claimed that he knew Ignis and Gladio would manage on their own, but there was someone else he wanted to take care of. In the end, they had always known they would part ways again. Perhaps with less bad blood between them than what caused them to hunt apart in the dark—but they knew that they would part ways with Noctis dead and the city rebuilding. They kept in contact, of course.

“Yup, he sure is. Somewhere’n Duscae, I think? What brings ya all the way out here, anyway?”

Luna looked around. There were quite a few cars around. Some refilling their tanks. Some busted in a way. It looked that Hammerhead was still one of the busiest places in Lucis despite the light having returned.

“I’m on a journey, you could say. This young lady over there asked me to help her find her parents.”

Cindy peeked over, and Luna cringed a little. She hadn’t meant to stray so far from Ignis, but Hammerhead was interesting to look at. She quickly turned around and bounced over, trying to keep the facade of an eager child on her first day out of the city up. “Hello, Miss Cindy!”

“Now you’re growin’ into a purdy thing, aint’cha Diana?

Quite a few people knew a handful of the Lestallum orphans. A few were even adopted when the sun rose—Luna had not been one of them, but she’d always gotten along with Cindy whenever she was in the city. She was legitimately delighted to see Cindy, and showed as much; perhaps not as overemotionally and enthusiastic as the actual Diana would have, but she still ran forwards to hug Cindy. The woman returned that hug and they both laughed, with Ignis standing as straight as always and with a surprisingly warm smile on his face.

“Too bad about Prompto, though, I could’ve used his help with getting around the country.”

“Where’re ya headed for?” Luna let go of Cindy and turned to look at Ignis.

“Galdin Quay, then along the coast.”

“Mhm. Well, yer in luck, Ignis.”

“Ah?”

Luna looked around again. Lucis had always looked more alive than Tenebrae in a sense. After all, her country had been part of the empire for so long, that most of them were just considered nearly citizens by the time that Fenestala Manor’s forests were set ablaze and she sat down next to her brother as their home was taken over, beside the burnt remnants of her mother. A cold shudder ran down her spine as she remembered that. It had left her with a slight fear of fire for the rest of her life—she knew that fire was useful, but she had also seen the destruction it could bring.

But here in Hammerhead, in Lucis after the dark, the people were happy. There was no war looming on their horizons any longer, there were no Daemons preying on them in the night. It was an ideal world, one that she had been willing to die for—a world she _had_ died for.

A world she desperately wanted to see, now that she thought about it.

“Well, take a wild guess who stopped here just an hour ago with a flat tire. Or well, don’t. Talcott, c’mere!”

* * *

 

Out of all possible people, Ignis really had to admit that _this_ was perhaps the luckiest stroke in his history of lucky strokes. Talcott was a good person, one Ignis had spent considerable amounts of time with. They had gone and uncovered some half-buried truths about Ardyn together during the ten years of darkness, between hunts and the like.

Honestly, Ignis was rather thrilled when the boy—he doubted he would ever see Talcott as anything but a boy—came over when Cindy called for him. Luna remained rather quiet while Ignis and Talcott caught up with each other—there wasn’t much to tell on Ignis’ side either way. He’d only been working on reconstruction plans and stayed rather withdrawn otherwise.

Talcott meanwhile told how he travelled together with Prompto sometimes for shoots, how good old Wiz actually went and finished rebuilding his farm and how happy the older Chocobos were to be back home. He also said that he’d just come back from a trip to Gladio to hand over some reports.

“Strange that Gladio wouldn’t immediately forward them to me.”

Talcott scratched the back of his head. “I... guess. Well, either way, I was considering stopping at Cape Caem for a while. Old Cid’s there with the royal vessel—sure I can take you and the little miss along to Galdin. Or even Caem.”

“Sounds good. Thank you, Talcott.”

* * *

He hadn’t really stopped to think since the Crystal released him. His resolve would have crumbled if he had had done so, and he was absolutely certain that he and his opponent were both suffering. They were in their own little worlds, after all—the Chosen as the one the gods heralded, and the Accursed the one they had discarded. Noctis knew that deep-seated hatred and spite could change people, and he had assumed that Ardyn had been a side-effect of that as well. That he was someone who used to be kind and caring and had since been turned into a vengeful spirit ready to strike at the gods.

It certainly explained why the man had nearly started crying out of anger when their battle was coming to a head. Noctis hated Ardyn—but Ardyn hated Noctis as well. It was mutual.

He had assumed that maybe, just maybe, there was something else to Ardyn that he had never gotten to know.

Noctis curled his hands into fists and let out an annoyed hiss.

“Do you ever do anything useful?”

Ardyn had finally moved again not too long ago. Instead of sitting on what passed for a ground in this abyss with his legs crossed he had… moved to lie on his back with his hands behind his head. It was _infuriating._

The man clicked his tongue. “I already told you, I have no intention whatsoever to do what they want from me. Go ahead, go running along now as you always did when they called. I’ve got—“

“If you say ‘better things to do’, mark my words, I will make your… un-life… un-living… hell.”

That wasn’t as smooth as it could have been. At least it made Ardyn open his eyes and raise an eyebrow.

Noctis decided he gave up and sat down again. For real this time. There was nothing to do in this dark, empty void and all he had was… _Ardyn._

This had to be what hell looked like. Had he done something wrong in his life? All he came up with was that one time he put sugar on Prompto’s fries instead of salt. And that one time he pretended to have died just to get a rise out of Ignis. Or that one time he accidentally managed to knock out Gladio. Or when he tried to smuggle a cat into the Citadel and it shredded Clarus’ shoes. Honestly if this was hell he likely deserved it, but why were the gods putting him together with Ardyn instead of dumping him in the eternal hellfires that Ifrit dragged the people of Solheim into?

“You really are rather lacklustre at insulting people.”

“Are you calling me a goody two-shoes?”

“I wasn’t going to,” Ardyn’s face split into a grin where he was lying, “but you do have a point, dearest distant nephew mine.”

Noctis buried his face in his hands. “Seriously, what’s your fucking issue?”

“Oh? Weren’t you the one saying that you would be freeing me from the Scourge?”

“Are you telling me that you’ve _always_ been an asshole?”

“Perhaps.”

“Great! Just great.”

* * *

Galdin Quay offered a stunning view, if nothing else. Luna stared at the sun reflecting off the calm seas of the Lucian coast. Ignis and Talcott were talking about something, but as she scanned the coastline she realised there was nothing here. Only the sun shimmering on the seas.

But Luna wasn’t here to watch the tide. Instead she wandered off despite Talcott having asked her not to a few minutes ago—it was their own fault for not really helping but instead discussing the logistics behind the rebuilt resort. Though not technically an actual child, this kind of talk bored the wits out of her for the most part, and so she wandered off along the shoreline.

It was that one woman playing the guitar that called to her.

Luna knew that song; it was an Accordan seafarer’s shanty that they sung in the past. There was a gaggle of people around that woman, and Luna joined them. The melody was bittersweet at best, and she knew that the lyrics had been adjusted in some places. But this song together with the sea breeze made her feel _alive_ somehow.

Not that it was a song about being alive. It was a song meant to counteract sirens at sea, to keep the seafarers aware that life was over way too quickly with the wrong turn of the tide. A song that had made its way to Lucis at some point, a song that echoed through the dark a lot during these days. She knew the melody, but hearing the words now again made her think about nothing in particular. A few minutes passed like this, her her and several people swaying along to the song. For something that had been sung to counteract sirens, Luna realised with a small smile, it sure was catchy now that sirens had been revealed to just not exist. Or perhaps those men of the sea had simply mistaken Messengers for sirens and tried to follow them as they went back and forth between the mortal and the divine.

That froze the smile on her lips.

The blood of the Oracle was gone. Bled dry with her death and whatever had happened to Ravus—no one ever spoke of how the High Commander eventually died, just that he had been sentenced to death and that King Noctis’ retainers confirmed that the High Commander was dead by the time they arrived in Gralea. She couldn’t even begin to imagine her brother sitting in a cell awaiting execution. Had they beheaded him? Had they just _starved_ him?

She tried turning around to see if Ignis and Talcott were still talking about the logistics of rebuilding, but as she turned a flare in the distance caught her eyes. It had just been a split moment of something so eerily blue that it couldn’t have been from this world. She squinted into the direction it had come from, and realised that she didn’t know enough about Lucis to say where exactly it was coming from. Just that somewhere in the distance along the shore there was a familiar flare of power that clearly meant that something was manifesting there, just as it had suddenly manifested just yesterday in Insomnia.

She stood up and hurried back to Ignis and Talcott, who was just asking where Diana had slipped off to. Perhaps uncharacteristic for her but she threw herself at Ignis’ free left arm and clung to it; she really was only trying to catch his attention and pouted at Talcott in hopes that the young man would understand her intentions.

For a few moments it was awkwardly silent between the three of them, then Talcott laughed and said that he was going to refill the gas and Ignis and Diana could join him in a minute.

“Lady Lunafreya, is acting like this really wise?”

She made a non-committal noise of some sort and instead let go of his arm. “Wise or not, I think I saw where we’re headed next. Except I have no idea what place it was.”

“Ah, you did?”

“A glare in the sunlight similar to the one that the shield in Insomnia reflected just before we left. It was… further along the coast. Higher than Galdin Quay, probably up on a steep cliff or something.”

Ignis furrowed his brows a little as she said that and started walking towards the car slowly. “There isn’t much alongside the Lucian coast. Really, just three or four points of public interest, and Galdin Quay is the most popular choice of that.”

The sea breeze carried the shanty that this woman was still singing, the strumming of the guitar very quiet up here. Talcott had parked his car somewhere off the road rather than even attempt to find a spot on the full parking lot near Galdin Quay.

“You were most definitely too young to remember when we retook Cape Caem and remodelled its harbour into something that could harbour refugees for a while. Quite a few passed through there until eventually we lost the point around the five year mark of eternal darkness. Maybe you recall that much. But I digress. As much as I hate playing along with the gods, they did say that we were looking for some… sort of forlorn soul wailing near the sea.”

Luna realised what he was getting at. “Oh! Oh. You think I saw Cape Caem’s lighthouse reflecting something with that magical glare?”

“Maybe you did. From the description it sounded like it was in that direction, and Talcott is going there anyway.”

“Cape Caem…”

It was the last place that Noctis wrote from before Luna died. He had called it his home away from home, as Iris had suggested they treat it. Mentioned how he was excited to set sail to finally meet her again after all these years, how he wanted to show her the cape and the lighthouse and the hidden little harbour. It was a good place according to him, a little desolate but the breeze there was fantastic and the sunsets were even better. And that was ignoring all the history relating to King Regis and his retainers as they set out from that place to Altissia all those years ago. She had really, truly wanted to have him take her there and talk all about it and its little peculiarities, its upsides and downsides. She didn’t care that the elevator was old and kind of loud, honestly—she just wanted him and his friends to take her to the top to show her the view from there.

She wouldn’t be going there on her own, of course. Still, she kind of wished she were in King Regis’ car with them. She could almost hear the argument brewing on the horizon about who sat where in the car, and who would be taking the wheel. Back then, everyone had insisted that Ignis drove; part of her wanted the man to drive even now. Noctis would likely insist on her sitting on the front seat next to Ignis, which meant that in the back it would be Gladiolus, Noctis himself and Prompto. Iris had been comfortable sitting between her brother and the prince back then, but even if Luna said that she would be comfortable like this everyone would _insist_ she get the better place.

She completely missed how she got into the car that Talcott had bought after the sun rose. He still had the truck that he picked Noctis up with, he was just telling Ignis, he had just left it at Cape Caem together with Cid. Honestly, most of that drive was a strange blur to her. She hadn’t considered that doing as the gods wanted her to would mean she would be going to a place that Noctis had meant to show her—without Noctis.

The gods be damned, she thought as she fought back the tears she felt forming in the corners of her eyes. There was no point in crying over spilt milk. Noctis was dead. She was alive, as unfair as this was. There was a fair chance she would be running into the Glacian again once she did as the goddess asked of her, and maybe then she could ask what the hell all of this was supposed to be.

* * *

The fact that Noctis wasn’t seeing that faint glimmer just behind him had been amusing for the first… hour? Day? Week?

Time either didn’t seem to pass at all in this place, or it passed so blindingly fast that it even made someone who had lived for an eternity dizzy. Ardyn _hated_ this just as much as he hated the person he was stuck with. Either way, he was stuck, quite literally. Noctis was trying to figure out what he was supposed to do but not bright enough to turn around for once. Ardyn himself would have been content about simply remaining here and not doing anything for an eternity, but this whole issue of existing again was bothering him. He had thought it was over. Over for real this time, when he saw the Lucii rush at him. He hadn’t even had time to react to that properly before he was quite literally torn to shreds.

Ardyn had been torn to shreds plenty of times. So many times in fact that he had stopped counting after he reached the double digits. But the final time really stuck, literally so. He hadn’t felt agony in _hundreds_ of years, but that very moment he felt nothing but agony.

Quite impressive, in fact.

But now, he was back and better than ever—well, being dead all aside, of course. Stuck in limbo with the man who had killed him, the man who had so willingly marched to his own death for the greater good. Noctis still was barely more than a child to Ardyn, but that came from his skewered perception of time.

He let out a long sigh and sat back up. Noctis was still mumbling to himself and sitting there with his head lowered, and Ardyn was quite sick of this pathetic show.

The Chosen ignored him, and Ardyn stood up. Walked over. Grabbed Noctis by the back of his shirt and yanked. The poor boy let out a surprised yelp, but Ardyn was past the point of caring. He had tormented Noctis, Noctis had killed him in return. Prophecy or no, they weren’t friends. Family, perhaps, but the sort of family that one hated relentlessly.

Still… he was stuck. And even the most displeased Ardyn knew when he had to compromise.

“I swear you set me up like this,” he muttered angrily before forcing Noctis to stand up.

“The hell’s your problem, man!”

“The gods, for starters. You. My general state of existence, no matter whether as unkillable entity of dark or as soul sewn together after getting torn into pieces. Honestly, I should have prepared a list of people and things that generally inconvenience me, but alas and alack, I have not. Do me a favour Noctis.”

“Fuck off.”

He only rolled his eyes and forced Noctis to turn around. Ardyn normally really was not the man to quite literally pointing things out, but this descendant of his brother’s surely needed it. “You were complaining about not having a clue what to do. Well, twinkle, twinkle. There you go.”

Being dead had its plus points. It meant that his fellow prisoner of fate did not do this annoying thing where humans only stood still and breathed for a while when they saw something that amazed them. Neither Noctis nor him were breathing; shreds of soul in an endless void definitely did not need to breathe.

“How did I miss that?”

He _almost_ wanted to comment on people often missing what was right under their nose—or behind their backs in that case. But Ardyn only rolled his eyes again.

“… But weren’t we in the throne room in the Citadel earlier? It looked like it.”

Yes, this was divine punishment. It absolutely had to be. Ardyn let out a groan and started walking towards that faint light somewhere in the distance. He could have sworn every other step it sounded like glass shattered under his boots, but he marched on anyway. Noctis hesitated for a moment, then hurried after him.

“Formless voids do tend to lack something as petty as different floors. Or gravitation. Really, I’m amazed we aren’t floating.”

Noctis frowned; he looked at his feet for a moment and looked like he wanted to say something but decided against it. Likely the ground they were walking on wasn’t really solid, just the circumstances of being enough of a soul to walk on it instead of falling through it and shattering into pieces. Ardyn wasn’t too certain of the properties of the beyond.

Even less so of the properties of a void.

“Wait, didn’t you say you weren’t going to move?”

“Oh, make no mistake, Noctis. I have no intention of _helping_ you. But since you can’t even see this without someone pointing it out, I might as well come along for a laugh.”

“Jerk.”

Ardyn only laughed.

* * *

At first it felt like a prick in her side. She noticed that Ignis also started getting more uncomfortable the closer they got to Cape Caem. Something was throbbing in her side by the time they took a break when Talcott noticed how Ignis had gone from mild discomfort to what seemed like mild distress.

Ignis marched off, but when she tried to follow him, Talcott put a hand on her shoulder. He shook his head and waited until Ignis was rather far away, by now almost trampling the grass that had grown over these hills in the past year.

“Let him blow off some steam. Cape Caem’s a… sore spot for him.”

“It is…?” Ignis hadn’t sounded like that at all. Then again she barely knew this man—Talcott did, however.

“There are a lot of people who never really moved on from the dark. Ignis, though, he’s… a special case. Never moved on from _before_ darkness. Gods above, he was one of the most tenacious hunters out there once he found his strength again. Without his structural planning and manpower division skills we wouldn’t have shored up Lestallum as well as we did in the end. Parts of Insomnia that stand these days wouldn’t be standing without him.” Talcott leaned against the car with a sigh, crossed his arms and closed his eyes. “I think he blames himself for the blood price that needed to be paid to see the sun rise. Every so often he’d just freeze whenever we looked into history together and it mentioned the Fleuret bloodline, or the royals of Lucis.”

Luna knew that Ignis and Ravus had joined together for a while when Altissia had been under siege. It was all thanks to Ignis that Ravus in his blind rage and grief hadn’t doomed Eos entirely. She also knew that Ignis had almost tirelessly worked to help humanity survive, and now focused his efforts on a city that needed more thorough planning than the deconstruction of Lestallum as the people scattered and returned to where they had come from.

“But Cape Caem, that place might as well be haunted for him.”

Noctis.

It couldn’t be anything but memories linked to Noctis that made the man restlessly walk between two trees in the distance—and of course that strange energy that poked them both in the sides. How Talcott couldn’t feel it she didn’t know, but then again the gods were likely only making the two of them feel them. Other people could see them—but no one really mentioned them in the end. The throne room was, after all, haunted. As far as the general population in Insomnia was concerned at the very least.

But Cape Caem were the remnants of a home away from home, from a harbour meant to protect people in the dark that eventually fell to the relentless forces of darkness.

She nearly missed Ignis calling for her. Talcott was the reason why she heard him, and Luna hurried over.

“Did you feel that just now?”

“No?”

Ignis had his head turned towards where Cape Caem lay, a deep frown on his face. “Strange. I swear I felt something familiar. Like someone drawing a weapon in the distance.”

“Probably whatever we… I-I mean. Whatever I need to send to the beyond so Noctis can take care of it.”

She didn’t want to think about it. She did want to sing—but she didn’t want to sing for the gods for once in her life. Yet here she was, following Ignis back to the car and letting herself get carried to the place where she would have to sing again. Again sing because the gods wanted her to.

Back when they had been children, their mother had often sung for them just because she could, and even when Sylva couldn’t, Ravus did. The last time she had heard him sing was on the day they buried their mother, and after that all he did with his voice was bark commands. Luna had so desperately wanted to sing with him again, but by the time her brother and her stood side by side rather than back to back, she was dying and he was torn between wanting her to fulfill the destiny she was so prepared to die for and ensuring that she would not raise another deity. In the end, Ravus had settled for letting her go. And then she had died by Noctis’ side—and he had died on his own somewhere in Gralea.

She wouldn’t be singing that familiar song that came to her mind even now. The Song of the Stars was meant for the gods that abandoned Eos after saving it by sacrificing people. Luna was fairly certain that even Ardyn’s condition was part his own hubris and part the fault of the gods; after all there were plenty of ways that a healer could corrupt themselves. If they had only used their powers to help Ardyn instead of condemning him, perhaps neither Luna nor Noctis and their families would have died they way they had in the end.

She was not going to sing that song, and even if the Glacian came here to beg her.

* * *

Cape Caem felt the same.

Like it was haunted. Empty. As if someone took out a hammer and chisel and slowly tore away everything that had made it Cape Caem when they had arrived here for the first time with Iris. Every time they returned here, something inevitably went wrong in the dark. As if the entire place wept for the deaths of King Regis and the disappearance of his son. At first the Glaives had done a more than solid job with securing it and making it a second base away from Lestallum. More than a few thankful refugees from Accordo and a sprinkle of Niffs who had made it out of the country in one piece had even called it their home. Nothing had gone up in flame and nearly everyone had made it out in one piece when the power went out and they fled back to Lestallum, but ever since the people said that something here in Cape Caem was wrong.

Even now with the warm sunlight and the sea breeze being almost as it had been when he had arrived here first with Noctis and the others, it felt off. Talcott saw what he and Luna had felt for the past few kilometres of their drive, and immediately took off to look for old man Cid.

Ignis and Luna stood still, not entirely sure what to make of this thing.

“Does it look the same?”

“Yes. Same blueish shimmer around the lighthouse. I can’t really tell how much it covers from here, though.”

Ignis nodded, trying to recall what this place looked like. Like so many other things, he had forgotten over the years. Only vague memories, usually linked to Noctis, remained nowadays and Cape Caem was too much of a haunted place to really be thinking about it as much as he was right now.

The lighthouse on the other hand was an interesting detail. He had gone down a list in the last few hours of things that could await them here at Cape Caem. Since Shiva had told them to soothe souls that lingered here and that needed to be sent to the other side with a song and a smile he had figured that it would be something terrible. A fragment of Noctis’ travels, come to life to haunt them. Perhaps a few ghosts of a sort of the people who had died when Cape Caem was once again lost to the dark, or echoes of ten years ago when they had arrived. Perhaps even an echo from King Regis’ time here.

He had stopped on that thought for a while. King Regis, Clarus and Cor were dead—the former two died during the fall of Insomnia, and as they had found out later, Cor had eventually come across the Daemons that were coming to stop Noctis and with his injuries had lost the battle rather quickly. Weskham and Cid were alive.

Cape Caem had been their base of operations rather than a home away from home. But the more he thought about it, the weaker his knees became. There were quite a lot choice words that Ignis had prepared for King Regis should they ever meet again in the afterlife, but now that he might come across the man after all… he couldn’t think of anything. Luna tugged on his sleeve and said that she would go on her own, if only to make certain that Cid was okay.

And just like that, she started to walk away.

“Lunafreya.”

He followed her, but not once did she stop to check if he was still following. It felt as if something was calling her, and Ignis was vaguely aware that she was going towards the lighthouse rather than the house. Talcott had gone off into that direction, likely to check for Cid. Judging from the occasional call he heard, Talcott hadn’t really been successful so far.

Eventually she stopped, and Ignis did as well when he heard her steps ceasing. They must have been in front of the lighthouse now, the place that led into a defunct cave settlement that had been abandoned six years or so ago. They hadn’t really discussed what to do with this place—it hadn’t been important. After all, only a handful select people considered Cape Caem a home; most of which had other places to live in now. Iris was happy in Lestallum, Talcott lived in Hammerhead, as did Cid, Cindy and Prompto. Gladio and Ignis lived in Insomnia, the former in the outskirts and the other in a restored floor of the Citadel in the heart of the city. Monica and the other Crownsguard had scattered, lived everywhere and nowhere all at once. Some left the continent, others travelled Lucis to see what had become of the country.

The others that might have called it a home had died.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

Ignis blinked several times and moved to stand beside Luna.

“How come whenever’s somethin’ that’s messin’ up, it’s always you who comes runnin’? Don’tcha ever get tired o’that?”

“I’m… afraid I’ve never once been given the opportunity to leave whenever trouble arose somewhere. It barrels in—I follow, I suppose,” Ignis shook his head slightly and let out a snort. “Good to hear you’re still in one piece, Cid.”

“That’s a load of Chocobo turds if I ever heard ‘em, boy. No opportunity? Yer always running headfirst into it without thinking twice about it, and I want nothin’ of whatever the hell you got yourself into now, kid.” He heard the man sigh. “Jus’ fix the damned lighthouse ‘n harbour. Far as I’m concerned, neither you nor the lass were ever here to fix it. I’ll jus’ go and calm down Talcott before he screams his lungs out.”

And just like that, the man left. Slower than usual. Likely his age catching up to him, and all of a sudden Ignis felt nothing but exhaustion. Mental, physical. A year of rebuilding, and nothing to show for it other than the population of Lestallum was thinning out, and now the gods had forced him on another familiar dance. A dance around Eos, with a royal to protect.

Ignis turned towards Luna, who was breathing slowly.

If nothing else, she did not sound too happy about this either. Two peas in a pod.

Noctis would have hated being called that.

Honestly, Ignis hated it as well.

* * *

A distant glimmer could so very quickly become an all-encompassing light.

But right now, standing in front of it, all it looked like was a feeble flame flickering weakly, about to die completely. Crystal-blue fire, but as he looked at this pathetic image, he saw that the core of it was tinted green. The sickly light of the fires that Daemons used, often shimmering against the blood red moon in the past until these events came to a standstill at around the time that Ardyn all but ascended as Accursed. The source of the Scourge had needed a human mind to stop being a mindless festering disease that destroyed without mind, that consumed matter until nothing remained. It had cursed him because he peeked too far into the abyss in search of power as he healed, but in a sense he had also kept the sickness from destroying Eos too quickly. Perhaps that was why the Hexatheon had kept him locked out of the beyond.

Though, if this was truly the beyond that awaited everyone, Ardyn considered it a sick joke at best.

Noctis tried reaching for the flame. Ardyn slapped his hand away.

“Considering we are but shreds of soul, I would advise against that.”

The Chosen, the King of Light—the child the Astrals forced to fight their fight for them. Whatever this place was, if asked about it, Ardyn would have said that Noctis truly did not deserve being here. The same applied to the Oracle, but there was no way to undo what the gods had done. She was stuck on the other side and Noctis was forced into this instead of getting rest.

He really wanted to slap himself for waxing poetics here. He didn’t give a damn about Noctis not getting his rest. Nor did he care about the Oracle. … No, he wasn’t certain what he cared about any more.

“So is this… what we’re supposed to be looking for?”

“You. You’re looking for these.”

Noctis crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, alright. Is that what I’m looking for then?”

Ardyn pinched the bridge of his nose. “I _assume_ that this is indeed what you’re looking for. There likely is an equivalent to this in the world of the living that your retainer and the Oracle will have to approach and… _serenade it_ so it stops being just a flame here.”

“And if I just snuff it out now?”

“Again, I would advise any of that.”

“How come?”

“You haven’t dealt with the whims of the gods. You could be snuffing out whatever it is that this is, yes, but would the remnants of the Scourge also leave the other side? She mentioned rancour—there really is only one thing that uses that sort of energy. The Scourge. Remnants of it, clinging to whatever it is that they’re looking for.”

Noctis remained quiet for a while after that, staring into the fire quietly. He turned around and looked back into the direction they had come from a few times while doing that before turning back around to see if anything about the flame changed. He truly was still the same flighty young man from before the Crystal at heart. A heart that had stopped beating a while ago—who knew how much time had passed since the gods started putting them back together slowly.

“There wasn’t anything like this back where we started.”

“Didn’t you _listen,_ Noctis?” It was rather fun to see the Chosen’s expression go grim. “She said that this one would come last; it makes sense that there isn’t anything on our side.”

“Alright. Since you know everything, what are Luna and Ignis looking for then?”

Really, he had no idea. It could be anything; it was impossible to tell where exactly they were in this place. After all, a void was formless, without substance, without time or space.

“You said it’d be related to the Scourge—a Daemon then?”

No one would sing to a Daemon, now that Noctis mentioned it. No, Shiva had mentioned souls. It could only mean that the living side of this deal was looking for something human-shaped; whereas the purging part that Noctis and Ardyn had been burdened with against their will could only mean that they would be dealing with a Daemon of some sort.

Then again, could it be that they were going to deal with souls that shattered at some point, unable to pass on in peace; with enough cracks for minimal bits of the Scourge seeping into these souls and living past the return of the light that way?

Ardyn pinched the bridge of his nose. “Not on their side, I don’t think. On our side, most definitely, but on theirs? I reckon it might be someone familiar. Or someone completely unfamiliar. Hells if I know.”

* * *

There was nothing in the hidden harbour that struck Luna’s interest. Ignis bristled when they entered it, clearly remembering something about this place. He moved as if led along by an invisible hand, automatically and with a precision she hadn’t seen from him yet. He knew the path he was taking, a path that was unchanged even ten years later. Apparently Cid had made some efforts to restore this place to what it looked like before the decade of darkness had taken place, but a single man could only make so much progress. There was one thing that Ignis was all but making a beeline for that Luna also noticed now.

A worn couch. A small table. A radio that was most definitely broken. There was an assortment of things that were on this table that Ignis was now brushing his hands against, almost in a frantic hurry. Luna slowly followed him down the stairs to see if she could help him, but something clattered off the table. Ignis flinched but still went to look for it. Luna hurried over to help him, because there was something about his suddenly dire and sad expression that made her worry about him. She picked whatever it was that he had dropped gingerly and looked at it.

“A… photo frame?”

“Is the picture still in it? Four men, the Regalia, the lighthouse?”

Luna had seen few pictures that looked as old as this one. There were a few back in Fenestala Manor that showed her late grandparents, a few of her parents when they were younger. But this one was remarkable in the way how perfectly preserved it was. This was a picture that held important memories, and now that she looked at it she did see Cid in it. It made sense that he would have it.

“Yes?”

Ignis put an arm over his sightless eyes and shook quietly. What eventually left him after a few moments sounded like either the world’s strangest wheezing laugh or the most strangled sob in the world.

“Before we made Cape Caem our home, King Regis and his group made it their base of operations. The only ones alive in that picture are Cid and Weskham. I assume Clarus took the photo, which means he isn’t in it; King Regis and Cor have since passed.” He went to lean against the wall, his arm still across his eyes. “Is the royal vessel docked here?”

Luna peeked around a corner. At some point this place had been turned into a warehouse, a proper wartime harbour even. Further up, on the metal beams and constructions, she could still see the makeshift camps that people had made there before they had left the place in a hurry when the lights went out properly. The royal vessel looked tiny and misplaced, moving slightly and in the distance the sun set. Was it really already that late? She was about to turn around and tell Ignis that it was there, but a blue glimmer caught her eyes.

She looked back up.

It seemed as if crystalline fog was drifting between the metal beams, dancing on the breeze. It glittered in the sunlight that fell into the hidden harbour, giving the whole situation kind of an odd atmosphere. Luna watched the display for a moment, noting that the mist’s strange twists and turns that weren’t the breeze seemed to copy a heartbeat, as if it was alive. The only thing she heard was the whisper of the breeze and the sound of the sea, the occasional creak from the royal vessel and metal structures overhead. But she heard nothing else.

Then she heard Ignis gasp.

She almost didn’t want to turn away from the scene over her head, but she turned around.

And nearly let out a yell of surprise.

* * *

Lunafreya had gone off towards the edge of the water to check if the royal vessel was still there on his behalf, and Ignis tried to sort his thoughts for a moment.

The picture and Cid being here was likely a hint that the universe had left them. They were hunting for something or someone who died, who harboured dark thoughts or enough regrets to let in something dark that could fester, even a year after darkness had come and gone. Likely people who died before the sun set for the final time in the war, or people who died before the sun rose again. People who had lost something, people who had lived long enough to have regrets that ate away at them.

He immediately struck Lord Clarus off the list. That man had lived to serve, and if reports from inside the city were to be believed, he had died in a gruesome way, yes, but while doing his duty as the Shield of the King. If Gladio and Iris were to be believed, that was all that Lord Clarus ever wanted, even if the thought of leaving King Regis to fend for himself was something he did not waste a lot of energy on—it scared the man.

King Regis was an entire other can of worms. That man had likely died with a myriad regrets, from sending off his son with a smile knowing what waited at the end of his path, to the directions he took with the country. But somehow King Regis did not seem like the man who would remain somewhere with no one else but an old friend around. If he remained. There was this strange nonsense about the Lucii that Ignis never fully understood, no matter how much more of his soul he poured into his research after the Ring of the Lucii had already taken a good chunk of it along with his sight.

A peculiar shudder ran down his spine.

Lunafreya still hadn’t said anything about the royal vessel being there. He dropped his arm, slightly worried that something had happened to her, but as he dropped the arm, something about the world violently shifted.

It was as if lightning had struck him, as if something violent that didn’t belong here was surging through him. As if that horrible sensation wasn’t enough, following the feeling of being struck by lightning, he swore he saw something dancing.

_Saw._

It was barely more than the outlines that he had seen when the goddess of ice had stepped into the void. Lunafreya—the girl, Diana—everything was in that strange light that seemed so wrong. But what he really noticed was that blue fog somewhere where he assumed the ceiling was. It _moved,_ the damned stuff moved, there was absolutely no denying it. What someone with sight likely missed was that it was moving towards a certain direction, all of it. But Ignis _saw_ it clearly. Something was going on over there, and he didn’t like it the slightest.

“Oh gods!”

Lunafreya’s voice startled him—she sounded legitimately shocked.

“Your eyes—your face!”

He raised his hands to his face, not entirely certain what she meant. Everything felt normal, except for the strange prickling sensation that covered his entire body and seemed to pull him towards that strange apparition.

“My…? Lady Lunafreya, are you okay?”

“You’re asking _me_ that? Your face looks like it’s on _fire!”_

Crystalline blue. It shimmered in the corner of his sudden vision, a whorl of energy that was forming on where he assumed one of the metal beams that everyone from Cape Caem was.

Suddenly he found himself standing on the Altar of the Tidemother again, the rain hitting the stone and hid face, both rock and rain cold against his skin as the soldiers, the MTs, held him down. Felt the ring on his finger again, how it burnt through his vision but left him with the almost unstoppable desire to attack. How occasionally something flickered in his vision alongside that horrible swirl of energy that he knew was Ardyn.

This seemed to be an echo of that time—because his face felt normal. There was nothing burning, just the scars that the Lucii left for his daring demand of power if only to protect the Chosen.

“It’s fine, Lady Lunafreya. I feel nothing, so I reckon this is an echo.” He pushed past her, and turned his face up to where the energy was bunching up. It was definitely taking some sort of form, but not something he could define other than ‘vaguely human’. “Up there. Is there a metal beam there? But something’s happening there.”

The Oracle turned a little, shuffled around. Looked up, likely. Ignis had no idea what she looked like and would never know, but he could imagine a person narrowing their eyes as they squinted up somewhere rather well. She remained quiet for a moment, before letting out a sigh.

“It’s… hard to tell. There’s something there, yes, but… I don’t know what.”

“I believe that’s what we’re looking for.”

“Ah?”

He could swear for a second he smelled sulphur again. Heard the crackle of flame in the already fire-lit night of Insomnia, heard claws scrape against the street and buildings, heard the shattering of glass whenever a warp hit its intended target followed by a dull thump and a whine. The snapping jaws. The heat.

He suppressed a groan from the sudden intense sensation and kept his head turned towards the energy.

That explained what this was. Who their first target was.

When they had come to again on the floor of the Citadel’s throne room, Noctis had been sitting next to them. He’d asked them to accompany him downstairs again, that Ardyn was gone but he needed the three of them to do something while he brought back the light. Gladio and Prompto had a hunch, yes, but they didn’t exactly know that Noctis would not live through this. He explained how he had defeated Ardyn, and what they could expect. How the sun would bring the horrors of darkness into plain view, how that they all would have to work past this to rebuild their homes in the way they wanted them.

“I think I understand now.”

One of the first things they came across as they stumbled through the suddenly brightly lit streets of Insomnia was a body in a pool of blood. Not old and dry like so many horrible things the other two started seeing now that there was sunlight, but someone who had died long enough ago that their body was cold but not long enough ago for this gross pool to have dried yet.

They lost the King Noctis Lucis Caelum the day the sun rose—and the Crownsguard Marshal Cor Leonis.

According to how Gladio and Prompto described it, he must have come across the surge of Daemons that had started rushing towards them when they were in front of the Citadel with no way through the mockery of the Wall Ardyn had conjured up. And if those injuries from the fight against Cerberus and from that mob of Daemons hadn’t killed him, then Ramuh’s thunder would have clearly done the man in completely. Ignis had hoped that Noctis and Cor could have met at sunrise, like the Marshal had said. At least that meant that neither Noctis nor Cor would have to be on their own if the afterlife existed.

He kept his eyes on that swirl of energy high above his and Luna’s heads.

“Marshal.”

* * *

The second Ignis said what he understood, something in the harbour changed. The breeze died down. For a split second the smell of seawater was replaced by that of sulphur, like a flame snaking its way through a building. But then she finally _saw_ what he had tried to point out in that split second. She had been distracted by how pretty this place looked with the strange energies floating about in the sunset, but now she saw it. How it centred somewhere into a vague shape that she hadn’t seen through all the glittering lights before.

She’d heard the stories, but had never had the pleasure of meeting the famous Immortal herself. A man who outlived what should have killed everyone else, time and time again. Before Gladiolus the sole survivor of the Trials of Gilgamesh, younger than Gladiolus and to this day the only known person who made it out alive—because the Shield did not boast with his achievement anywhere. Only a select few people knew, and they would not break the promise they made to him. A man who outlived the Fall of Insomnia for some reason that no one understood even though he had been in the city. Luna herself knew that a good chunk of Citadel staff that could be excused that day had been sent to other sides of the city. Cor himself had been stationed so far away that he never made it back to the Citadel on time and realised at some point that King Regis had done this deliberately.

A man, more myth and legend than a person.

And indeed, Luna blinked and within that split second she saw the man sitting on one of the metal beams. If she didn’t know better she would have assumed him to have been there all along; had she not known that he was dead and Ignis pointed out where the energy had been going to, perhaps she would have mistaken him for the real deal.

“Good evening, Ignis, Lady Lunafreya.”

Ignis tensed slightly, as if he were expecting something. He had noticed the energy earlier, and he would likely tell her if something about that energy changed into an attack pattern.

“You’re what’s haunting this place, then?”

A long sigh that seemed to echo through the entire harbour was all she heard from the man. Cor Leonis had travelled to this place, from this place, and had come back once again. He out of all people possible had spent the most time here alongside maybe Cid—that much Luna knew from the stories about King Regis and his travels.

“I suppose I am.”

That… didn’t sound like a soul so full of rancour that something festered. Luna had kept her mouth shut and Ignis between her and the Lucian Marshal, but now she slowly stepped beside Ignis. “Could you… explain? We’ve been sent here by—“

“How does it feel, to outlive what you shouldn’t outlive?”

Luna blinked a few times, but Ignis lowered his head. She hadn’t outlived anything like Cor and Ignis had, but she was still alive against all odds.

“To survive what you shouldn’t survive?”

“Terrible,” Ignis muttered, not loud enough for anyone but Luna to hear.

For a moment only the waves could be heard in the harbour, the creak and screech of metal following a second after. Somehow, even though Luna herself had never been here before, this place felt nostalgic. Like a home, despite the fact that an orphan of the dark did not have a home and that Lunafreya Nox Fleuret had lost hers over twenty years ago. She understood why Noctis had spoken so fondly of this place in one of his letters that Umbra brought her, back when she had already made her way to Altissia and he was still waiting for the boat behind her to be fixed so he could leave his home country’s soil for the second time in his life. And just like the time before, he was sailing right towards disaster and the death of an Oracle.

Cor had died a 55-year-old man, a survivor of the war but not one of the dark, servant of no less than three Kings of Lucis. It looked kind of silly to have him swing his legs off the rails he was sitting on, but the laugh he let out sounded… alive, full of spirit. Like the laugh of someone who had lived for ages but who had not lost his humour.

“Kind of unfair of me to ask that, when the answer’s obvious. I suppose it would make sense that they would send you here first. I’m just surprised you came.” He vanished without a trace, only to reappear a few feet further down on a different beam. The blue fog wavered as he did that, Luna noticed. Ignis, too, moved his head slightly, his lips moving as if he were talking to himself. But Cor, who was now standing on that particular part of the construct, only crossed his arms. “I would have expected you to ignore the order, Ignis.”

“How… come?”

Something here was slightly off. Hearing the stories about him, she would have expected a much more serious man than the one who was obviously grinning like a madman while he stood in one of the more dangerous places in the hidden harbour. His voice had too much of an amused bounce to it when he spoke. That wasn’t exactly Cor, but she wasn’t certain why she thought it wasn’t him either.

“To survive something you neither expected to nor wanted to survive is the worst punishment the gods could think of. I would have thought you, of all people, would spit in a deity’s face after what the dawn cost, to march off with your head held high just to let them know your opinion.”

He shifted slightly, uncomfortably. Cor had likely hit a sore spot, and Luna understood.

“The Oracle I understand. But you being here is… unexpected. Though perhaps that is the wrench stuck between the gears that the gods needed.”

“Wait,” Luna piped up after all, “tell us what you know. Please.”

“Left you with nothing as usual, did they?”

When on earth had Cor Leonis the Immortal been an avid follower of the Six? When had he gained that belief, and when had he lost it? She wasn’t too certain about the details, but outside of Cleigne and Duscae, the rest of Lucis was not exactly religious. Solheim may have been blasphemous in its final act, bold enough to rise against the god who had only given and not demanded as far as recorded history went, but with the gods asleep and not easy to reach any longer, belief on this continent had dwindled. Only Titan was one that warranted revelry, because he was so very real and tangible in the middle of mainland Lucis. Cor Leonis had been born in Insomnia and grown up there, however. Those people stuck to the Crystal, a thing without a mind of its own as far as the general population was concerned.

Noctis not once mentioned anyone being overly religious in his immediate surroundings except for one of his politics tutors. A tutor that Ignis quickly replaced because Noctis never listened to that man and instead went to his best friend and advisor for explanations instead, so eventually King Regis had the man removed from his position and just told Ignis to continue the good work.

Ignis cracked his knuckles where he stood. It seemed that he understood a lot more about the situation than she did—she felt kind of useless, truth be told.

“They indeed did. Though this is rather enlightening in general.”

And suddenly the mood shifted.

The tension that had choked this place a moment ago suddenly dispersed. The blue fog continued drifting on the wind, but something about it was less captivatingly sinister than before.

And Cor only let out a snort. “Sharp as usual, I see. Yes, that’ll do just fine. I’m afraid I can’t offer you much of an explanation. This isn’t like the tomb near Keycatrich again—I don’t understand it myself. Just that it wasn’t over, somehow, when all this thunder rained down on the streets and I cursed the gods one final time. What a sick joke—the Immortal dies at long last, yet gets banished from rest at last.”

That… sounded familiar. Ignis, too, tensed up slightly when he heard these worse; Noctis was in a similar situation right now and it had driven the Accursed to complete madness to be barred from rest. Just that Cor hadn’t regenerated anywhere unlike Ardyn did until his final death at the hands of Noctis and the Lucii.

“I’m tired. By the damned gods, I’m tired. You came here on their behalf, so I can really only speak for myself. Lady Lunafreya, I refuse to put up a fight. Heavens know I’ve put up enough of one when I was alive, even though there is a part of me that wants to attack you, and you alone.”

Luna closed her eyes.

“Like a sailor who’s been at sea too long, you yearn for landfall, and if it’s… just an island. A hidden harbour. Is that what drove you here?”

The roar of the sea was all she heard once again, along with her own heart beating in her chest. It was so surreal to be alive, so very surreal.

“I suppose.”

That was enough of a non-answer. “The gods sent me here to sing, Cor Leonis. Would you permit me to?”

“Go ahead. The others might not be so forthcoming, but it’s been enough.”

Ignis took a few steps backwards. Whether he saw right nor or not did not matter. His previously sightless eyes remained unfocused even now, but there was a strange glow to them, and there were still blue flames that looked like they should hurt seemingly burning around one of his eyes. He slowly got down on one knee, the deepest of bows one could do before royalty and something that people normally did not do in Tenebrae. But strangely enough, it seemed appropriate right now. She saw out of the corners of her eyes that Cor was echoing that motion on that not so distant metal beam where he still was.

Luna took a deep breath.

She still refused the Song of the Stars. That song died with her bloodline; there were no living Fleurets who could prove their lineage. Instead, she raised her voice so sing the same song she had listened to at Galdin Quay.

* * *

At first, nothing too dramatic happened. The flame froze mid-flicker, the sudden stillness even making Ardyn who was sitting on the ground not too far away suddenly cross his arms. Noctis carefully took a few steps backwards, not entirely certain what to make of this.

Their discussion had ended in a fit of insults thrown at one another—he hadn’t even known half the words Ardyn had used only for the man to eventually settle on calling him a dimwitted fool with a saviour complex. The gods were not to be trusted, was Ardyn’s hard stance of this, and that he was extremely tired of dealing with any of this; Noctis meanwhile argued that they did not really have a choice in this matter. It was either doing as they demanded, or being stuck in this empty abyss with nothing and no one but each other for all eternity.

Then the flame vanished.

Noctis deflated slightly and was aware that he was doing it—he didn’t particularly care. Ardyn was a minor inconvenience at best and a complete nuisance at worst, but he was stuck here as well even if he had decided that the refusal to act would likely get them somewhere faster than doing as the gods wanted from them. Even if he hated the man, he strangely enough felt no shame showing his disappointment around him.

Something was off when he saw that Ardyn seemed to be paying attention to whatever it was that was going on behind him. Noctis slowly turned around, almost expecting nothing to be going on at all.

Instead he stared into a malicious pair of eyes, black as the abyss that surrounded them and showing a reflection of himself. He saw his own eyes widen in shock there.

Slowly backing away, Noctis swore that if he still had a beating heart it would have stopped right there, with his breath completely sucked out of his lungs just by sheer shock. But the dead could not nearly have heart attacks because they were staring into the eye of a Cerberus that seemed to be sizing its prey up before a pounce.

It had taken him and four of the strongest fighters in Lucis quite a while to whittle one of these down. Even then in its death throes it had managed to catch them off-guard and had likely fatally wounded Cor, judging by the way the Marshal had limped off afterwards. Now he was on his own, together with a man who refused to lift a finger. Noctis backed away further, suddenly painfully aware that he really did not feel up to this task at all.

He was in an empty void, for crying out loud! Miles upon miles of nothing, nothing but an emptiness that seemed to swallow him up whole; his body was transparent because he did not have one—a shredded soul returned to form and given enough autonomy to work at the whims of the gods. He saw a flash of claw and fang, heard something decidedly unfittingly wet splatter on the ground somewhere in that ominous darkness that allowed him to see others but not enough to tell what was going on with that Cerberus, and all he could do was raise his arms to hopefully block enough of the blow to avoid instantly dying.

What he heard instead was the all too familiar sound of glass shattering, a murmur that might have been a howl back in front of the Citadel, and suddenly felt a weight on his shoulder.

“Goodness.”

“What… the hell…?” He opened his eyes.

In front of him countless crystalline weapons were suspended in mid-air, shining and shimmering despite the distinct lack of light. They seemed to emanate some, illuminating just enough of the void to see something dark spread on the ground rather quickly, not exactly as black and empty as the void surrounding them but dark enough to raise concern.

“Noctis, Noctis, Noctis. You could not even take off even one lousy head before you killed my little pet?”

The Cerberus from the front gates. The creature that had nearly gotten the last laugh in a fight that was almost more desperate than the one against Ifrit not even an hour later. Suddenly the stench of sulphur and the rancid smell of Daemon blood hit his nostrils, and Noctis let out a gag. This thing looked as mangled as it had been when it had died and vanished into smoke as Daemons were like to do. The next thing he noticed was that Ardyn’s ghost weapons did not quiver the slightest. There were so many—his father had never quite managed to hold them perfectly still. But Ardyn’s weapons seemed to be completely suspended where they were, hanging in the void like little lethal lights of a sort.

“I thought you weren’t going to—“

“And let something as idiotic as a dog that caught you off-guard kill you? It might no longer be relevant because you did ascend as the true king and challenged me in the end, but letting someone so delightfully stupid get torn apart by something as inconvenient as a half-dead dog spawning from a flame isn’t on my agenda.”

“You keep a fucking agenda?”

“It’s more of a checklist.” Ardyn waved his free hand around a little, and the weapons moved ever so slightly. Not enough to provoke the Cerberus some more, but enough to get its attention again. “Noctis Lucis Caelum survives long enough to ascend as true king and gains the Crystal’s full powers for a good fight? Check. How would you and people your age put it again… being an overly dramatic jerk, loafing around on the throne of the family that scorned me to ridicule the gods that hated me? Check. I cannot quite say that being put back together and forced on a likely profoundly stupid adventure with you is on that list, but I might as well add it. Given that _this_ thing is what you encounter first, I really have to worry for what else will await you.”

Ardyn removed the hand, and Noctis screwed up his face. He wanted to strangle that guy, so bad. But they were both backing away from the ever expanding pool of blood that was making strange noises. It sounded like the damned puddle was _boiling._

Neither of them really wanted to take any chances with that.

Noctis realised that the Cerberus wasn’t the fastest any longer. Back before the gates of the Citadel, its reaction speed had been incredible and near impossible to keep up with. Three heads meant that it had ample opportunity to see what was going on, and its size was both its downfall and its strongest asset. They had mangled it pretty well until it collapsed, complete with slit throats and everything. That was the tactic that the Kingsglaive generally used when they faced this kind of Daemon anyway. A Cerberus was devilish in more than one way, its deceptive speed taking more than one Glaive by surprise—and that usually was their last mistake.

This one was staring at them with its eyes, the heads all moving. But slower. One of them even did not bark or howl; only gargling sounds escaping it. In fact, only one of them seemed to still be actively capable of spitting fire; the one that had nearly gotten Noctis himself had it not been for Cor taking the brunt of that last attack for him.

Ardyn snorted after a moment of looking at the Cerberus, occasionally making a weapon lash out when the creature moved a little too quickly for his tastes. “Interesting tactic to use. Hitting something until it dies is not very nice, Noctis.”

“Shut up. It worked against this thing, and it worked against you. Proven tactic. Hop off my dick.”

If nothing else, that got the first laugh that wasn’t laced with bitterness or hatred out of Ardyn. It almost sounded scarier than any sound the Cerberus was making.

“Point taken,” Ardyn said, “but I reckon we ought to focus on this thing. Or at least put it out of its misery.”

“Yeah.”

Shiva had made it sound like they would be forced to fight for their lives, but all it took in the end was a shower of blades to grind the Cerberus into fine paste. They had watched the creature for a few more minutes before they both screwed up their faces. This was not a fair fight. For the Cerberus. And so they both raised an arm, with weapons popping into existence, a shower of blue and red crystal. Noctis wasn’t all too happy about how the reddish weapons seemed to outnumber the blue ones ten to one—but a job done was a job done. Ardyn was staring at the creature on the ground with narrowed eyes as he dismissed his weapons one by one.

Noctis only really noticed that the blood on the ground was gone now. “… Hey.”

“….”

“Hitting something until it dies _again_ isn’t very nice, Ardyn.”

Instead of saying anything in reply to that, the Accursed took a few brisk steps forward, past where the boiling blood had been a few minutes ago. They had cleaved a head clean off, and Noctis swore he saw one of the paws twitch when Ardyn put a hand on one of the remaining heads. Instead of fizzling up into miasma as Daemons normally did, this thing remained behind. Every chunk of flesh that was torn out remained scattered around even if the offending weapons had long since vanished. The only thing that was missing was the blood, but perhaps that was just another power that the creature had not used in the fight in front of the Citadel, turning its blood into literal boiling sludge.

Noctis had seen Oracle Sylva heal. After all, that had been why he had been in Tenebrae to begin with, why Niflheim had made that bold move to attempt to wipe out the Lucian royal bloodline before they returned to their protected city. It had been soothing, a calm energy that seemed to make the dark shadows that lurked in his nightmares at the time go away. Something that went hand in hand with the Messenger Carbuncle, the same kind of power that seemed to ward.

For a moment he thought that Ardyn was about to show that very same power that Noctis had been old only the women of the Fleuret bloodline had, but nothing of the sort happened. Ardyn’s hand remained still, no sign of magic whatsoever. But the pose was familiar. Eerily familiar, in fact.

Then the man cracked one of his more crooked grins. “So that’s how it is, eh, Shiva?”

Noctis slowly walked over. Whatever Ardyn was talking about, he had no idea once he stood slightly behind the man. That was simply the corpse of a Daemon that refused to vanish.

“Could you do me a favour, dear? Sing again.”

“What?”

“I’m not talking to _you,_ Noctis. I’m talking to this one.”

“… Dude, I know you’re delusional and all that shit, that’s why I was chosen by the gods to kill you, et cetera. But you’re talking to a corpse. We beheaded the damned thing. I mean, fuck, look at it! It’s not moving.”

And then, just as he finished talking, he heard a noise. Low at first, wrong at first. Like a screech straight from hell, from a creature that was, by any means, dead twice over. But then, not even a split second later, he started hearing it. A melody that didn’t seem to belong to this dead body, to this empty void.

“Seeing someone off with a smile and a song,” Ardyn said surprisingly gently for someone as terrible as him, “was a tradition back in my day. They said, if the person was fine with moving on, you’d hear them sing.”

The voice was familiar. A voice Noctis had known all his life.

And suddenly he heard the rush of water nearby. Suddenly the Cerberus’ remains lit up like it belonged with the Lucii rather than being a remnant of something that should have been washed away long ago. Noctis swore he heard Cor’s voice loud and clear for a moment, just before Ardyn removed his hand from the Cerberus’ still head only for the glowing chunks of flesh to vanish in a flash of light.

What remained was a surreal landscape of what looked like a lake under clear skies at night. Everything remained inky black around them, but there was the occasional glitter and sparkle that looked like the stars reflected in still water. There was no certain pattern to it, and it seemed that either the top or the bottom of this abyss was mirroring the other side. So, a still reflection of stars where stars should not be.

Ardyn let out an impressed whistle. Noctis let out a hum of agreement to that.

This did look rather impressive.

 

 


	3. MOVEMENT II: the nocturne of the temporary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> beyond the ocean, a soul despairs at the goal of a journey
> 
> in the sea of stars, blood of thine own bleeds metallic dark

“Heh, didn’t think I’d be tasting your cooking again any time soon, Ignis!”

She remembered proper dinners with her mother and her brother fondly. But she always knew that people who weren’t royalty usually did different things. Sitting here and watching Ignis and Talcott work together as if they hadn’t seen each other in a while made her kind of jealous that she never really had had the joy of sharing food with people she knew before she died.

Ignis looked less disturbed than he had had in the harbour.

Luna had sung, the song and the roar of the ocean making it sound like a lullaby rather than what it was. The blue fog that glittered in the setting sun’s light had vanished by the time Cor nodded at her and vanished—and with the Marshal went the strange glow in Ignis’ eyes. He had only shaken his head a bit and blinked a few times, but his eyes were back to before.

Unseeing.

Whatever it was that had been going on there, Luna didn’t quite dare to ask. She only watched the sun set. Eventually Ignis put a hand on her shoulder and took a deep breath.

“Perhaps we ought to see if Cid and Talcott are okay. Is that fine with you?”

She hummed in agreement, and they turned their back to the water and the boat. On the elevator Ignis pointed out that one of their destinations, from what Shiva had said, sounded like it was Altissia. Since they were already here, he slowly said, they might as well take the boat there and then see what this was all about.

Talcott and Cid were fine, of course, but they noted how the strange blue light had vanished not too long ago. Cid had looked at her for a moment, his eyes narrowed as he passed Ignis. The man had said that as far as he was concerned, neither of them were involved in this mess. And before Luna could say anything, Ignis had nodded when Talcott asked where the two of them had been, and then went on to say that the two of them decided to check if Cid hadn’t just been sitting in the grass somewhere.

A pretty bad lie, but one that Talcott accepted and that Cid let slide.

Which brought her to this dinner, and as she watched how Ignis swatted Talcott’s hand away when the young man tried to get a first-hand taste of whatever it was that Ignis was making—she had kind of missed that conversation by looking around the house—she had to finally agree with Noctis. Cape Caem strangely enough immediately felt like a home away from home. Like a place that would welcome her even if she returned years later as a seasoned warrior who had lost a war. Even if the world ended and started rebuilding, Cape Caem would have this strange homely feel to it.

Perhaps that was just the feeling the sea invoked in Lucians, given that technically speaking she was one this time around. Talcott laughed as Ignis shoved him away with an amused grin on his face, and old Cid rolled his eyes and told them two to stop playing in the kitchen like children.

“Course, children actually present’re exempt.”

That finally got a giggle out of her. Ignis and Talcott both froze in the kitchen, Cid continued sitting there as if he hadn’t just said anything at all, and Luna was giggling.

She never really giggled during dinners back in Tenebrae.

* * *

“Be honest. Yer itchin’ to get goin’ and leave Lucis behind.”

Ignis blinked blearily.

It was late in the night. After Luna helped him with the dishes they had agreed that they would have to find a way to get to Altissia, likely by asking Cid if he could take them and if the man refused they would have to book a normal boat ride—it wasn’t that expensive and Ignis still was one of the few survivors of an old bloodline, which meant he could easily pay for just about everything short of whatever luxuries Luna had been afforded because of her royal station. But after lying down in bed he had found himself tossing and turning, unable to sleep.

Thus he had eventually gotten back up to pace on the ground floor of this familiar house, and then sat down on the table when his heart started racing for no reason whatsoever.

Judging from the direction the voice was coming from, Cid was leaning against the rails on the top floor, but Ignis wasn’t entirely sure where exactly the man was standing.

“I know that look on yer face. I raised a son and a granddaughter, ya can’t fool me, Ignis.”

Ignis leaned backwards in his chair with a sigh. It was true that he had often considered just leaving Insomnia to at the very least travel Lucis, if not straight up leave the continent. But being blind made all of that near impossible, and Insomnia especially needed him and his abilities for the reconstruction efforts. There also wouldn’t have been many places that would have helped him just _forget_ that he had spent ten years slaving away at trying to find a way to help Noctis only to come up with nothing. Not even ensuring that Noctis did not have to die on his own he had managed—Noctis had seen right through him and cut him off before he could finish the sentence and suggest that he could stay with him until the bitter end. The very, very bitter end. Not the bittersweet end that Noctis had left him and the others to; fighting Daemons and being present when the sun rose for the first time in nearly ten years.

No place on Eos was free from that lingering memory. And even if the four of them had not been in, say, another city of Accordo, then the people there likely built some sort of monument to remember the dark decade or the man who brought the light back—or even just a memorial to the late Oracle, who promised salvation only to not receive it because of her untimely demise.

Ignis wanted to leave. Except that he couldn’t.

At first because he had been busy with the rebuilding effort for half a year. Ever since then another matter kept him confined to a place that only brought up bittersweet memories at best.

“I wasn’t trying to fool you. But I can’t deny I want to leave.”

He heard the man slowly come down the stairs, then heard the telltale sound of a chair being pulled. Cid was sitting opposite him, and Ignis could almost imagine how the man was frowning at him.

“This the first time I hear yer healthy enough to wander about again.”

He had been sick. Sick enough that people were worried that one of the heroes of the sunrise, the last Crownsguard as some called him because of his choice to live in the Citadel, would die. For a long time Ignis had only gotten worse and worse, to the point even he gave up hope. But he was better now, against all odds.

The most likely suspect for his sudden health were the gods. He pinched the bridge of his nose and banished the thought from his mind.

“It was a rather sudden development.”

“These things happen, I guess. But this one’s happened so fast, here ya are, with that lil’ missy no less.”

“To be fair, she did approach me first and asked me to help her find her parents.”

He was half expecting Cid to start asking about what it was that they had done in the harbour, but surprisingly enough, the man only shook his head. He likely had a hunch—Cid was a clever old bastard, as Gladio had put it several times during the decade of darkness. No matter what, Cid was resilient and intelligent enough to make it through things, even if his mood got worse and worse until only a handful people could stand the cranky old man any longer. He was much better now that he was free from the cramped up Lestallum streets, back at Hammerhead for the most part of his time, and everything back in order.

“So yer on a trip around the world. For a kid ya barely know whose parents’re dead.” Cid leaned forwards, onto the table, judging from the way the table moved. Then the man let out a laugh. “Yer a weird damned person, Ignis.”

“Maybe so. It is better than the other options.”

Being perceived as strange was something that seemed to run in the family. His mother and his uncle were always called an odd pair of siblings; and though not related to the Scientias, even his father had often been called kind of an odd duck. It only made sense that the heir to that family would also be a strange man who did strange things like getting himself roped into a kid’s quest for her parents—which people didn’t know was that it actually was a quest around the world to cleanse it.

“And where are ya off to next with her, then?”

“Altissia,” he sighed out, “ideally. I don’t really believe that she’s Accordan from the looks, but it wouldn’t hurt to check in with Weskham if he heard anything before he and the others came to Lucis.”

Cid laughed.

“Figured. Well, I’m afraid I can’t getcha to Altissia again. Goin’ back to Hammerhead with Talcott.”

Ignis nodded—he really had figured, feared and hoped that at the same time. “That’s fine. If Talcott can drop us at Galdin Quay on the way back that would be perfect.”

Cid mumbled an agreement, and the two men sat there like that for a few more minutes in silence. Ignis enjoyed the sound of the ticking clock. Sure, he would have loved sleeping, but something about hearing a clock tick while also knowing that it was dark was… comforting. Like he was biding his time again, trying to figure out a way to keep this intended ending from happening. Like he had a purpose in this world other than simply trying to rebuild a city he didn’t care about that much since the most important part was missing.

“Yep. Ya should be able to score some tickets when ya arrive, but I’d say try bookin’ some in advance just so the missy can sit down if she needs to.” Cid stood up, stretched and yawned. “Oh, ‘n Ignis?”

Ignis opened his eyes again and turned his head to Cid. “Yes?”

“Thanks for puttin’ Cor to rest. Kiddo definitely didn’t need t’be some sorta angry poltergeist.”

Ignis’ mouth hung open as Cid walked off as if he hadn’t said anything unusual.

* * *

As someone who had spent as much time thinking as Ardyn had—really, there was a reason why he was so hateful to begin with, and it was mostly linked to hundreds upon hundreds of miserable years with nothing but himself for company—it still was a peculiar change. It truly did look like the sky during a clear night, complete with what looked like entire star clusters that were normally only visible during special times of the year or in certain parts of the planet. But there was something off about it, and he wasn’t entirely certain how to tell what it was. Perhaps it was just too _normal_ for the void beyond. There wasn’t any sense to it; there was no telling where the walkable ground ended and the formless void with those stars glittering in them began. What he did notice was that the walkable ground had changed from something pitch dark to something reflective, as if it was a frozen lake with clear, unscratched and uncracked ice in the coldest part of Niflheim with the clearest air imaginable.

Yet it wasn’t slippery at all. It wasn’t wet either. Despite being solid enough to walk on it, there was absolutely nothing to this ground he and Noctis stood on, the Chosen still turning around with wide eyes and an amazed laugh on his lips.

This man and Somnus were… nothing alike. Absolutely nothing alike. Somnus had quickly lost the appreciation for the world, would have resented an empty void with naught but stars in it.

“This is _amazing!_ Gods, I wish I could show Iggy,” he stopped dead with his back turned to Ardyn and threw his arms open, “he’d be floored!”

And before Ardyn had a moment to think about that, Noctis definitely started talking to himself. Started mentioning hemisphere-dependent stars and astrology nonsense that one would have never thought to hear out of the mouth of a king. It was endearing in its entirely baffling way, but Ardyn was not here to suddenly grow a fondness for his fated nemesis. He had discarded such idle attachments to people long ago, and had never planned on suddenly being able to forge an attachment to a kid who had become a murderer and a martyr at the same time for the same gods that had discarded Ardyn.

He eventually clicked his tongue, which made Noctis turn back around to look at him.

“I would have assumed the local deities would have had something to say for themselves. Not even a pat on the back for their little pet? What a joke.”

Noctis blinked a few times, his expression going from happy to sombre and then to annoyed. It was clear that there was something he wanted to say for himself, but he decided against it—whatever it was that was going through that pretty head of his, Ardyn would never know. And he never wanted to know. Somehow this petty little creature had risen above the desire to crush his opponent that Ardyn had tried to stoke in his heart. He had fed that flame, from attacks on the father so that he might raise an avenger to quite literally murdering and maiming the people around him to get festering rage. But somehow, sometime during that ten year interlude where Noctis remained missing, he had gotten over that grudge that Ardyn so deliberately had tried to ignite in Noctis’ heart.

Not once had he believed that someone could march to their own death with like that. Humans clung to life; and there was no denying in the way Noctis had looked that he also wanted to cling to that life. A life Ardyn had been weary of for so long that he did not remember what it was like to not resent anything and everything that moved and had the gall to break so easily. But still Noctis had managed to keep his head held high, had even almost arrogantly claimed that Ardyn would be to return as he once was—as if there had ever been anything but the insanely petty and vengeful creature that he had become.

How could this _brat_ , this inconsiderate _child_ who looked like Somnus through a smudged mirror, have the strength to say things like this and to even partially believe them?

But now that they were stripped of their humanity, now that nothing remained of them but fairly translucent and definitely flickering—flickering?

Ardyn stared at his own hands. Noctis stared at him, the annoyance suddenly wiped from his face as well.

“Uh… you okay there?”

A laugh bubbled up somewhere in the pits of his non-existent stomach, and burst out louder than he originally planned to laugh. He wasn’t certain if it was amused or hysteric; it was hard to tell what anything but intense emotions of hatred and demonic glee were like these days, the crushing weight of having been rejected time and time again had scratched away at his sanity for so long he knew that he was off the hinges but simply didn’t care any longer. But now that he was flickering and Noctis decidedly was _not,_ he understood.

He was never really supposed to exist after that ending. They had only brought him back because they could not leave their precious Chosen on his own until he regained enough control to take care of this by himself.

Or it was something else entirely.

He had no way of telling what the gods wanted him to do—and curse their names, he did not care about what they were trying to tell him with this. He just did not care. He hated them, he hated himself, he hated Noctis and that mild concern on his face.

As suddenly as it had begun the flickering ended, as if it had been a distraction from his thoughts and nothing more. Honestly he would not put it beyond these gods that they were only trying to torment him after already having tormented him for so long, and part of him just didn’t care any longer. He was here as was Noctis, and as much as he hated it.

Truly, he hated it.

But he might as well help that blind idiot find his way around.

“I suppose I’m fine, thank you very much.”

Noctis only raised an eyebrow before putting his hands on his hips and looking around again. “Any idea where we’re off to next?”

“Your beloved Oracle and your beloved little advisor will have to cross the sea—I suppose we too are to cross the sea. The sea of stars.”

Noctis only rolled his eyes at that joke.

* * *

She had crossed the sea in an airship back then, with Umbra and Pryna pressed into her sides as she quietly sat there. Her brother had made a point in making this a quiet affair; not even the Chancellor of Niflheim was supposed to know about her, nor were any of the people he generally worked with. He even went as far as disposing of the MTs when they were done, staring at her with his cold and hard eyes—and then his expression had softened.

“I’m supposed to be ensuring the goddess does not do anything should she rise. We make ready for war—but I do not recall seeing the Oracle.” He had nodded at someone who had approached her from behind, and then turned around. “I leave her in your hands. Do as you must—both of you.”

And with that, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret had gone from survivor of the Fall of Insomnia to most-sought yet declared-dead person in all empire-controlled lands and now to under the watchful gaze of the Altissia government. Not once had she been mistreated during her time there, but she recalled that King Regis had manifested that magical shield that persisted even after his death with the words that locked doors would seal her way no longer. And there she had been, once again staring at a locked door, nearly on her knees from exhaustion both mental and physical. The sea had looked so enticing back then; had looked like freedom.

Now she was watching the endless blue pass them by quickly; she hadn’t even known there were first class cabins. The first class cabins on trains were sparse and few in-between and most of them too expensive for most of the general population—and those who could afford it were from the military, people who usually travelled by airship rather than train. It was only Ignis and her in here.

The man was sitting with his hands folded neatly in his lap and his eyes closed, and honestly it was rather hard to tell whether he was awake or not. Since she didn’t want to disturb him, she had gone over to look out of the window quietly.

Altissia loomed in the distance, too far and too hidden beneath the rocks for her to see. It would be another hour or so before they arrived, and she had enough time to sit still and think about it. The city was gorgeous, and being rebuilt with even more fervour than before, according to Ignis before they boarded. She had only seen bits and pieces of how wonderful Altissia looked, and it held nothing but bad memories for her.

After all, this was the place she had died in originally. A city that she had been supposed to get to with the help of no less than three Kingsglaives; one of which was murdered, one who sacrificed himself for her to get out, and one she parted ways with because she knew that she needed to awaken the two deities sleeping on Lucian soil and did not want to have this man suffer through another person he cared about wasting their life one way or another. She had sat in Altissia with the Ring of the Lucii heavy in her hands and heavy on her mind, stood against the goddess of the sea only to have the Accursed drop his mask and lunge for the Chosen’s heart—and drove that knife into her stomach.

She gagged a little.

“I feel the same about this city.”

Ignis hadn’t even moved the slightest. Luna nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard his voice, softer than when he spoke to her before they boarded.

“I feel… almost bad about it?”

Altissia had been supposed to be the city she got married. Where years of longing to meet Noctis again came to a head, even if it was a marriage that was supposed to be in a peace treaty. She hadn’t been opposed to the idea at all; it had made her honestly rather happy. She would get to leave her gilded cage for a little, got to meet the Chosen again and likely King Regis and all those friends he had told her about in his letters. Instead it had become a city of tears when the sea goddess rose from her slumber, when the Accursed had been drawn out of his hiding place. Noctis had nearly died. She had died. Her brother’s resolve had been broken and he had been sentenced to death.

What she hadn’t had considered in between all those thoughts was the fact that Ignis, too, likely hated this city. Something that he never told anyone, because she had caught a glimpse of him before the dark veil had fallen over Ravus and him. His face bruised and cut, but definitely still a man who saw, who had fought her brother to protect his best friend. Exhausted, judging from the glimpse she caught of him, but alive and well and _seeing._

“You needn’t feel bad about it, Lady Lunafreya. The city does not feel, the sea goddess shan’t rise again, and the Accursed is dead. This time no one will attack you and who you’re with.”

All in thrall to darkness shall know peace.

Except that he didn’t really know peace. A man who hated acting on the gods’ behalves after what happened, forced once more to act on their behalf, together with a man he loathed. If she didn’t hate the man she would have almost felt bad for Ardyn. But finding forgiveness in her heart for the man who had murdered her… she couldn’t find it, at all. Noctis had found it, along with the bravery to walk his path to the bitter end. Luna had died clinging to Noctis, wishing that it did not have to go like this as she watched the goddess of the sea fall and the god of the land rise to protect her and the Chosen from Niflheim’s immediate reach.

“And even if someone attacked us, rest assured that I would make certain no harm would befall you—or our attacker.”

She hated violence. She hadn’t even thought that Ignis likely knew quite a few things about her, just as she knew quite a few things about him. Noctis was what connected them, what made them work together now. She hummed out an acknowledgement of what he just said and turned to look out of the window again.

“The seas are calm today. I reckon Altissia will be calm as well—but the thought is… much appreciated. Thank you, Ignis.”

Two souls on their way to a city they hated. Somehow, it sounded more poetic, like something out of an epic written before the Fall of Solheim. A story about two people forced together for the sake of this quest they were on, travelling the country to heal the wounds that remained. Somehow, now that she thought about it, it sounded a lot like what Oracles did in the past—and she assumed what Ardyn did in the past as well. She hadn’t gotten to ask him, or any other person who might have known him before he turned into the Accursed. The Hexatheon she conversed with remained as silent about his identity as always when she travelled, and the Messengers rarely spoke of things other than the prophecy. Umbra and Pryna, as much as she loved them and as much as they loved her back, remained Messengers. They were not to tell the Oracle anything about the past. Gentiana being the Glacian, she definitely never said anything—although more than once, Luna could have sworn she saw a pain deeper than even that within her own heart reflected in the woman’s eyes. Something so deep and cold that it would have even frozen over the Diamond Dust that followed the goddess whenever she was in that form. A pain colder than even absolute zero, perhaps.

And the other Messengers, she had not had the pleasure of meeting most of them. She knew that the reason why she didn’t meet Carbuncle was because the Messenger had started following Noctis around. The one who wandered dreams followed the Chosen, ensured that the nightmares were less severe than they used to be. A guiding ruby light in the dark.

One Messenger she had met had been after her forging of the covenant with the Archaean. She needed to find the Fulgurian, but he lay asleep on an island that was blocked from the general public. As she stood by the seaside at Galdin Quay that afternoon, staring in the blindingly red setting sun, a Messenger had approached her and offered her safe passage. Phoenix; barely more than a legend in Lucis. Its plumes only appeared to those who could sense or use magic, and even then they only seemed to work around her bloodline and the royals of Lucis. She had seen pictures of it, but nothing compared to the real deal as she approached it completely awestruck.

Just as she was wondering what had happened to the other Messengers, a heavy wave hit the ship. She heard some people up on the normal passenger deck gasp, and Ignis too had grabbed onto something to not fall off his chair.

“So much for the calm seas. Let us hope this isn’t some sort of omen,” she said gently as the man turned his head around almost frantically to locate some sort of noise she likely didn’t hear from her.

“Lady… Lunafreya, this isn’t the sea acting up, this is….”

Ignis had sensed Cor before she had really seen him. This time his face remained the same, did not suddenly light up with magic flames, but he still turned his head a few times before he stood up to pace around the room with a hand on one of his temples.

Luna had always sensed veins of magic deep within the earth, just as Noctis could easily locate outcrops where the energy was strong enough to be harvested. King Regis had simply plucked what he needed from those veins of magic; Nyx Ulric too had seemed to employ that same skill before King Regis’ death and after the Ring of the Lucii permitted him to use its powers to its full potential.

Perhaps some sort of sensibility to magic remained with Ignis a year after magic faded from the world for the most part. Luna was rather certain that her magically imbued gardens would have started to flourish again by now, and there was this lingering sense of crystalline glittering left around the Citadel. Perhaps Ignis could sense these residues.

But if he was sensing something now, didn’t that mean their next target would be underwater? She was about to voice that concern when Ignis suddenly stopped and sharply turned his face to the window.

Just in the same moment she heard the people up on deck all gasp and yell in surprise, and Luna almost hesitantly turned to look out of the window as well.

Almost too close she saw another Messenger rise from the depths. The one who ensured that the sailors who sang their songs on sea would always find land, the one who circled the wide seas of Eos without even once bothering with helping mankind outside of being some sort of minor deity that watched over those at sea.

Bismarck, larger than most ships Luna had ever seen in her life, but less threatening-looking than Phoenix had been. Ignis quivered lightly, shaking as if something about this really felt wrong to him, but Luna marvelled at the sight just as the rest of the people on the ship.

Ignis was a man who despised the gods for what they had done, she figured. Diana—Luna—was a person who enjoyed the wonderful sights of Eos, even if they were a Messenger uncomfortably closely rising from the depths of the sea.

This was perhaps a better view than stepping on Altissian soil again.

* * *

He had thought that perhaps he was missing something again, but the more time passed, the more Noctis started to realise that nothing nearby looked like this flame he had seen earlier. As much as he turned and looked, as much as he and Ardyn walked through the empty abyss, nothing was here but the stars. He wasn’t even sure why he was following the man—for all he knew, Ardyn could be deliberately leading him somewhere else, or just had picked a direction at random.

Still, he wasn’t entirely sure how to broach that subject. The Accursed seemed on edge, as if something was putting him on edge. It made sense, given that he had nearly flickered out of existence a while ago. But even then, Ardyn normally seemed like the person who remained unbothered by anything, and if it was raining acid and the skies had turned blood red. But right now, something about the man seemed… disturbed, somehow.

So instead of saying anything, Noctis remained as quiet as he normally had been back at the Citadel.

Eventually he realised how Ardyn was telling where to go.

He was following the stars. Even though there was no moon, and everything was a wild sea of stars, now that he looked at it he saw that their actual positions were the same. Following the rest set would lead them to… Altissia.

Ignis and Luna were also on their way to Altissia. Noctis couldn’t even begin to imagine how that must feel for the two of them. Luna had died there, after all—and Ignis had left his sight on the bloodied stones of….

He froze. Ardyn realised that he had stopped and also stopped, but did not turn around to look at him. Suddenly the disturbed aura around him faded, and Noctis saw how his shoulders shook.

The man was laughing.

“Realised it at long last, have you?”

“… Altissia. Ignis said the last thing he—“

“I heard what your precious little advisor told you.” Ardyn had been on the train after all, or at least had managed to listen in on most of their conversations. A cold shiver ran down Noctis’ spine. “And it is with my _utmost_ regret that I must inform you—the sneaky little bastard _lied.”_

Finally Ardyn turned around, and Noctis half expected a grin as amused and borderline demonic as the one Ardyn had shot him in the throne room of the Citadel back in Insomnia, back when the two of them had been alive. But Ardyn’s expression was surprisingly neutral now, his eyes surprisingly enough closed. Bold of him to assume that Noctis wouldn’t attack if necessary.

As if to call him out for that, Noctis summoned his trusty sword into his hands. Not the Sword of the Father—that sword only made him sad. Somewhere beyond this empty void his father likely still waited for him to arrive, if there was something like an afterlife. Ardyn did not retaliate with summoning a weapon; he only crossed his arms and opened his eyes.

“Now then, Noct. Don’t you think such aggression is a little bit uncalled for?”

“You’re the one calling Ignis a liar.”

Ardyn raised an eyebrow. “As if I did ever lie to you.”

That made Noctis pause. Yes, Ardyn had deliberately left out some information—but not once had the man actively _lied._ He had not been lying when he had said that Prompto was in Gralea, and though the mocking had been aggravating, not once had he told an untruth over the intercom, even as Noctis chased an illusion. The next one really could have been Prompto. And even before that—Ardyn had not had needed to introduce himself in Galdin Quay, ominous as his approach had been. Telling his name to them, none of them realised that Ardyn incidentally was the very Chancellor Izunia that had delivered the terms of peace—Noctis had not been in the Citadel that day, and neither had any of the others been around to catch a glimpse of him. And Noctis, Ignis, Gladio and Prompto had deliberately ignored the news and left the city before the Niffs arrived. No one had _asked_ him for his last name. And even if they had had, he was strictly speaking not lying when he called him Izunia either; that was the name they knew him under, after all. Every subsequent meeting had been a truth; the only one that stood out strangely had been the time he claimed that the next time they would meet would be beyond the sea, only to run into him near the Steyliff ruins.

“Still, I’m not letting you call my friends liars.”

“Oh, but lie he did!” Ardyn turned around again, and continued his almost casual stroll across the starlit void. “Granted, who wouldn’t have, in his position! I know I would have. It was so delightfully human of him to lie about what he saw last!”

Noctis let out a hiss and made a point in dragging his weapon across the surprisingly solid ground they were walking on. The sound that made was awful—like nails on a chalkboard. Screeching, invasive, all-around terrible and skull-piercing.

Ardyn did not seem bothered the slightest. Instead, there was a certain spring to his steps now that was rather unsettling.

They continued walking like that for a while, until Ardyn suddenly came to a sharp halt and turned around.

“You’re not even going to ask why Ignis would lie?”

“No. That’s Ignis’ business.”

“You really are too soft for your own good. Anyone else would have immediately started digging into that!”

Noctis shook his head. “Nope. Not taking your bait this time, old man.”

That at least seemed to knock the wind out of Ardyn for a second, or at least distracted him enough to stop being such an asshole for a moment. Unfortunately for Noctis, he recovered rather quickly. “Truly disappointing. And here I had prepared a dramatic retelling of what happened on that day in Altissia! But, alas, story time will have to wait, I’m afraid. We’ve arrived.”

Noctis only shook his head. “There’s nothing here, genius.”

“Why, one would think this is a void beyond!”

Noctis caught the flicker of a flame a second later.

* * *

Everything considered, he was amazed that it had taken him this long to throw up.

Ever since the encounter with the Messenger Bismarck, something nagging had been bothering Ignis. Something that at first had nearly split his skull in half, and eventually settled somewhere in the pit of his stomach when he got off the boat. Though not strictly necessary, Luna had seen that he was still struggling with his balance after that, and had only quietly grabbed one of his hands with her. He was fairly certain that they looked like a father and his daughter now, come to Altissia to see how the city looked after a year of light. That alone was enough to make Ignis wildly uncomfortable.

But the more time they spent walking down the streets to get to where Weskham had agreed to meet with them, the worse that nagging feeling got until it eventually twisted knots into his guts.

He had lost his sight here, his determination to push onwards, even his sense of worth. What Ignis had gained on these blood-soaked stones that day had been a sensitivity to magic—and something was spiking here. But it wasn’t like the spikes in Insomnia and Cape Caem had been; the one in Insomnia had felt calm and collected. Cape Caem had felt like the sunset that had taken place according to Luna.

But after an hour in Altissia, Ignis was rather certain that something that did not belong here was moving, at rather high speeds. It passed them by more than once, and every single time he tried to focus on that shadow of power that seemed to jump from one roof to the other he became more and more miserable.

By the time they reached Weskham, Ignis apparently looked bad enough that the man said that he had wanted to show them how the city rebuilt after the dark but that he was not going to since Ignis looked like he needed rest. Granted, Weskham was one of the people who had known just how sick Ignis had truly been at some point, and the man reassured Luna that nothing bad would happen—but the way he grabbed Ignis by the arm and nearly hauled him along betrayed his worries.

All in all, Ignis had ruined a perfect opportunity to look into that strange power spike. If he hadn’t already been miserable to begin with, then he surely would have been by now, just by virtue of being kind of useless.

If nothing else, Weskham was the same guy as always. Friendly, not overbearing. He made dinner, even asked Luna to help him—whatever they were whipping up, it smelled delicious. Some Accordan fish dish.

Too bad that the first bite was his only bite. Just as he chewed slowly, with Luna telling Weskham their little lie that Ignis had agreed to help her look for her parents, something outside moved. Too fast to properly grasp, and so full of hollow and terrible magic that Ignis dropped his fork. He didn’t even have time to excuse himself as he jumped to his feet and quietly thanked Weskham for having shown them around his apartment before he suggested making dinner. Ignis had slammed the door shut behind him and dropped to his knees in front of that toilet.

He was dry heaving by now, the spike of energy that made him even worse than usual refusing to leave the edge of his consciousness. However much time had passed he couldn’t tell, but Luna had knocked on the door once or thrice to ask if he was okay. Since the third time neither she nor Weskham had attempted to get something out of Ignis—as if his choked sobs weren’t enough of an answer.

Ignis barely even heard the door open when it did.

Weskham had taken care of Ignis in the aftermath of the disastrous covenant. Prompto and Gladio tended to hover between him and Noctis, but Weskham had not sugarcoated anything back then. The man had almost brutally delivered the news that Ignis had known all along—either he was going to continue travelling with them fully knowing that he would likely not be much of a help until he found his footing again until his injuries healed or he knew that he would never see again, or he would have to stay behind somewhere. The same choice that Weskham had made years ago; though in this case there was no city that Ignis had fallen in love with that made staying behind less awful. Knowing what he did made the thought of staying behind never knowing when Noctis would return to the city only to die the worst thought. And insisting on coming along despite it all only seemed to make the others angry, upset, or worried them somehow. And after all that time of them not grieving properly, every wound had opened all over again. Gladio had exploded. Prompto’s admittedly fake bravery had fallen apart. Ignis had never before in his life felt so wholly and completely useless. And Noctis… Noctis had not been able to live with the knowledge that Luna had died despite his efforts, that Ignis had suffered something or other in his service.

That hand on his back was familiar, comforting. Like an old friend he had forgotten in the ten years of darkness, despite the fact that Weskham had been in Lestallum once the lights in Cape Caem had gone out. The hand of a man who had proven his worth a hundred, a thousand times over.

And if it just was something like a small meal made with what the provisions gave him for the week.

“Easy there, Ignis. I already feared the city wouldn’t exactly be to your tastes, but I suppose it’s too late to change anything now, huh.”

He wheezed out a thing that sounded more like a sob than the laugh it was supposed to be—but Ignis deemed it adequately bitter-sounding.

“Gotta admit, takes guts for you to come back when you already have nothing but bad memories here. ‘Specially considering your condition. You sure you’re okay?”

“I’ll be… fine. Boat didn’t… agree with stomach. City didn’t agree with… everything else.”

“Anythin’ I can do for you?”

Ignis shook his head slightly, and Weskham let out a long sigh. The man gave him a reassuring pat on the back.

“You’re really stronger than most people I ever got to know. Most wouldn’t set foot in a city that took a lot from them again.”

Ignis leaned backwards a little with a sad sigh. He could breathe again somewhat, and the slightly turned his head to look at Weskham. “If that were the case… I shouldn’t have been in Insomnia.”

“Point taken. But were you ever _happy_ there after the sun rose again?”

He… wasn’t certain. It wasn’t like there had been anyone around to take over this and that job related to planning, and once he got sick that had been it. The only other places on Eos that had comparable reconstructions done—Insomnia’s faculties had been restored at Ignis’ behest, oh the irony—had been Gralea and Altissia, and Lestallum had had them throughout the dark. Since Ignis had needed medical help, that had severely limited his options.

Weskham did not wait for an answer, and instead pat Ignis on the shoulder again. “I brought the little lady to bed. I’ll be awake till you manage to fall asleep if you need help or just someone to talk to.”

Ignis managed to crack a sincerely grateful smile at the man.

* * *

A few days passed. The city was pretty, but there was a definite feeling of dread that followed her every step as she walked around with Ignis.

After that first day fiasco, he had recovered rather quickly. He had declined any help from Weskham—very pointedly so, which made her a little bit suspicious. Ignis sounded like he had a lot of experience in declining help when someone offered it. There was something that was upsetting the man other than the fact that something about this city was wrong, according to him. He had explained why his stomach could not handle the city on top of the general nausea from being in a place that had ruined so much in his life.

It made sense that a moving source of power would be bad for someone who could sense magic. She hadn’t been too skilled with it for the most part because the Oracle did not have to sense and also she had spent so much time in the company of MTs that it had dulled her senses to begin with—Ravus on the other hand had always looked like someone had stepped on his toes. Since he otherwise had no powers he never learned how to control it, but seeing her brother constantly crunch up his nose because of some source of power being nearby that he could neither locate nor block out had been rather funny at times and upsetting at worst.

Trying to follow the energy around however was… harder than anticipated. It moved too quickly, as if it was on the run from something. Ignis’ general sluggishness did not help with their search, and there seemed to be no way to really pin it down.

Eventually a lady selling ice cream—Luna had practically begged to get some—raised an eyebrow at Ignis. He had flinched while Luna was deciding, apparently because the source was nearby again. The woman leaned in.

“Hey. You’ll get one for free if you tell your—“ She looked at Ignis again with a critical look on her face, “—uncle that they’re saying it’s gonna rain tomorrow. Whenever it rains this strange feeling will stop.”

Luna stared at her with wide eyes. “But does it disappear?”

“Only if you don’t get too close to the Altar of the Tidemother.”

The world turned as she thanked the woman and said that she’d tell him that much. The ice cream she had insisted on not too long ago tasted like ash in her mouth as she followed Ignis; and the man still turned his face towards a source of something that Luna couldn’t feel every once in a while. The Altar of the Tidemother.

She could almost feel the sting of her bruises again as she passed by a bunch of people rebuilding part of the city. She could only hear the roar of the sea goddess when Ignis asked about how reconstruction was going. Felt the knife Ardyn had rammed into her stomach all over again, twisting white-hot as the darkness that seemed to make up his entire being lashed out and left her in more agony than she should have been in. Felt her blood waste away on the cold rain-soaked stone as she prayed for Noctis to succeed, kept her focus on him to ensure that he would live when she had had the chance to save herself at the cost of his life. How her lungs had been on fire while Noctis’ had been full of seawater, how her fingers were numb and feverish while Noctis’ were cold and clammy and so very lifeless after he defeated the raging sea goddess. If only she had never done her duty, she would have lived. Noctis would have lived.

But having to choose between herself and Noctis had never been a choice. She had saved him—and lost herself in the process.

She just didn’t find the right words to tell Ignis. It was true that it looked like it was going to start raining the next day. Something was brewing out on the sea, and Luna almost dreaded it. It couldn’t be anything good in this city that she had reached despite the world conspiring against her by removing the people who had been supposed to get her there before she herself declined someone else offering to take her.

Eventually she found the right moment to tell him. It was when he suddenly paused in the middle of an otherwise abandoned bridge that had been restored at some point, a bridge from which she could see the remnants of the Altar of the Tidemother in the distance. According to Weskham the government had decided to not rebuild properly, to only ensure that once the city was properly rebuilt there would be some sort of memorial for the late Oracle near its remnants. But otherwise the blood and rain-soaked stones would remain untouched for future generations, so that they could remember the fight that had taken place here. A fight that had slowly but steadily plunged Eos into darkness for a decade.

People would remember it like that, as a dramatic fight that the good side had lost instead of three tragedies clashing, with another two unfolding underneath that.

“We should have guessed as much,” Ignis dryly stated when she finished telling him what the ice cream lady had said with a shudder running down her spine. “What place other than the one where everything went wrong?”

“Yes… It is rather obvious. But I wanted to… I… didn’t want to go there again.”

“Neither did I. But if this is the only place where whatever is going on here stops, then we do not have much of a choice.”

Noctis—and unfortunately Ardyn by extension—needed the help to cleanse this corruption. If this something was affecting people in Altissia then she had a reason to go to the Altar of the Tidemother to sing there, even if she hated the thought of it. Even if the mere memory of it made her stomach churn as if someone had rammed a dagger in there again.

Bleeding to death was painful. A choice, except it wasn’t a choice. A joke, really. A joke the gods had played on her.

She hadn’t even realised that she had started shaking until Ignis carefully put a hand on her shoulder.

“Lady Lunafreya.”

“I’m fine.”

And for the first time since they arrived here, Ignis cracked one of his rare but sincere smiles that weren’t direct at a memory but at a person instead. “You’re evidently not fine. Come on. Let us return to Weskham’s place and plan how we should proceed with a cup of tea and bad memories instead of the sea breeze and bad memories.”

As if he had come to learn that the sea breeze did not lighten the weight of bad memories somewhere in the past.

* * *

Truth be told, he hadn’t really wanted to do any of this. But at some point his already paper-thin patience _snapped._ Noctis had gone from following quietly to whining, to limping around, and whining more and more until Ardyn let out a low hiss. That was all warning Noctis got. He whirled around, the glitter of those ghastly weapons they commanded over by his side. Noctis retaliated faster than anticipated, the shrill sound of glass shattering tearing through the silence around them. Faint red against faint blue; once Ardyn had almost considered joking about the weapons of his distant relatives looking like this because they were blue bloods and he was just the peasant, the Daemon erased from the bloodline whose existence had been purged from all but the most obscure old texts that no king or queen or other royalty ever went to dig into.

The Accursed had always been called something more active—completely discrediting the fact that the Scourge did its thing and Ardyn remained trapped in the same place for ages on end with no light and no company other than the ghosts he had started conjuring up at some point. The Chosen in turn was more passive; strong enough to go face to face with the Accursed but he needed an ace up his sleeve to even stand a chance. Hunter and prey, except the prey learned how to bite back hard enough that the hunter perhaps did not become the hunted but instead started considering the prey as an equal.

This empty realm was in a fragile equilibrium; Ardyn and Noctis could not stand one another. No matter how much Noctis had come to accept his fate, no matter how much Ardyn had longed for a place as quiet as this—they had not even remotely wanted to be together in this. Ardyn had deliberately burnt every bridge, had burnt the only city Noctis had ever known. Had tormented him simply out of spite—after all, how was this soft child barely out of his teenage years supposed to _ever_ stand up to the darkness that Ardyn had toiled against for years only to be declared a harbinger of it after sacrificing everything, even his humanity? Noctis by contrast had not lost much by the time he had set out. Perhaps his nerves once or twice. Had feared that he would be disappointing people once he became more of a ruler. A mother he barely remembered. A nanny who had sacrificed her life for his. He had lost his childhood happiness, yes, but that had been an effort to get rid of him as Aldercapt had done nearly entirely on his own.

A tempering was what Noctis needed; the gods’ blunt weapon that faced loss with the wide and terrified eyes of a child staring at a Daemon.

A tempering Ardyn had given him, had turned him from a soft kid with some combat skill to a bow ready to spring, a sword sharpened by the hottest flames of agony.

Now they were on equal grounds. No Daemons to empower one, no covenants by those who demanded a blood prize for their borrowed powers for the other. Two thousand and some years of darkness against thirty years of bitter tempering.

A joke. He had honestly considered it a joke.

But now as he and Noctis had each other at a stalemate with all their weapons drawn and unable to move them forwards because the other’s force was on the exact same level, Ardyn’s annoyance flatlined and gave way to mild admiration. A kid that had not learned how to fight beyond the basics, a kid who had loved and loved and lost so much that he even found it in his heart to see his worst tormentor to rest at last.

“So much for ‘resting in peace’, eh, Noctis?”

“As if I asked for this! Yeah, sure! Take any chance at rest from me, and hell, y’know what? Throw Ardyn into the mix! Let’s boogie in the fucking beyond to earn a chance at rest! As if I hadn’t plunged a sword into your fucking pitch-dark heart only to have one rammed into me! I enjoyed this shit so much, let’s do it all over again!”

Somewhere behind him, that flame they were supposed to snuff out once it manifested properly was flickering. Ardyn and Noctis glared at one another, only to dismiss their weapons at the exact same time. Noctis was quaking silently, and Ardyn was tapping his foot almost impatiently.

* * *

The rain turned Altissia from a bad haunted place to something straight out of his nightmares. Not that he saw what the city looked like, but he could still recall the way the rain had started while he and Ravus had swum over to the Altar of the Tidemother. It had been terrible to avoid the man’s attacks back then on top of his utter exhaustion and his already sore muscles and cracked ribs. Every attack he had taken to the front had made him see stars as he struggled against Ravus; and looking back at it he realised that just the slightest bit of adrenaline less pumping through hid blood and making his heart thrum like a war song in his ears and he would have keeled over.

Just feeling rain on his skin and hearing the splash of the sea against the canals of Altissia conjured up a terrible mixture of blurry images of the city during sunrise with the clouds drawing in. And between these images was the distorted mess that had been the vision that told him of Noctis’ fate. A fate he had been unable to change, a fate that had taken the Oracle and her home, had broken her brother’s heart beyond repair. The fate that had destroyed Insomnia, their home; the fate that led them towards the Crystal and Ardyn just as a compass generally pointed north.

The same rain that had poured down that evening, making his fresh wounds burn as if they were still aflame, hit his now sightless eyes and rolled down his face together with those tears that no one really ever saw. Ignis was more jumpy than Lunafreya, but that likely was related to the fact that he had survived this ordeal.

The woman had not lied to the girl when she had said that the city was better when it rained. But the closer they got to the Altar of the Tidemother, the worse his headache was becoming.

Ignis stopped dead when suddenly he felt a weight on his hand that definitely was not there. He grabbed it, desperately made certain that nothing had suddenly appeared to remind him of his hubris on that day. A reminder that he could have done something different, perhaps even destroyed Ardyn if he had just played along. But instead his panic-muddled mind had only given him one chance, only one choice—he didn’t know that he and Luna were alike in that regard. She had had the chance to save herself or Noctis—a non-choice—and he had been able to fight back or give up and play along. It hadn’t been a choice in the end. The only way a battered, bruised and beaten man like Ignis could fight was to believe the rumour that if the desperate need was strong enough the Lucii would lend their powers to someone for a limited time. Someone desperate enough that they had nothing to lose, someone so desperate that they were willing to trade in _everything._ Ignis had pleaded for the power to at least exhaust Ardyn enough to force him to retreat, all to protect the Ring of the Lucii and the Chosen.

They had let him. The ring had slipped off his hand as he collapsed after driving Ardyn off, the weight of it that had nearly crushed his hand back then suddenly gone and left him with nothing but the agonising pain of his nerves burning out completely.

This sudden burning sensation was _terrifying._ Noctis had not worn the Ring of the Lucii any longer when they had pried his corpse off the throne, something that Prompto had noted unnaturally quiet for the man. Gladio had choked back an angry sob, and Ignis had just stood before the stairs completely frozen and unable to do anything other than blink. They had considered the ring lost, a magical instrument lost to the world now that magic had burnt out completely.

Ignis wasn’t wearing the Ring of the Lucii. His hand burned as if someone had slipped it on again, but there was nothing. Just his gloves that hid the scars—if Gladio and Prompto had ever put one and one together, they had never told him. Those scars were so very telling that Ignis had hid them from Noctis until that horribly bittersweet last evening by the campfire. Noctis had understood what they meant, but he had said nothing. A secret that Ignis was prepared to take to the grave with him, and one that Noctis took to his grave with him.

“Ignis.”

He forced his hands apart and instead raised one to his scars, afraid that he looked the same as he allegedly had back at Cape Caem. No matter how agonising it felt right now, scaring the living lights out of Lunafreya was the last thing he wanted to do—not after he had seen her brother weep so openly.

The girl’s small hand was warm against his arm.

There was an understanding tone to her voice that sent a cold shiver down his spine when he remembered that it had been her who had gotten the ring to Noctis in the first place. At some point she had received it from King Regis before the man had died, had delivered it to Noctis as the man had likely asked her to.

“Do you reckon we’ll have to swim across?”

A blind man and a kid who had grown up in Lestallum during the dark swimming over to the Altar of the Tidemother sounded like a joke. He almost wanted to laugh at the thought of that. As if the universe hadn’t already played enough sick jokes on him and Lunafreya already.

“Likely. Why?”

The long pause told him everything he needed to know.

But before he could suggest they find a boat of some kind to rent, Ignis heard a familiar voice call for him. Not that he really remembered who it belonged to—and judging from the way how Lunafreya went to play the shy girl, she didn’t know that man either.

“Good to see you. You’re the guy who wanted to save the king—so much that the madam secretary told me to lend you a boat.”

That guard. From the docks in Altissia, shortly before the communicator broke thanks to Caligo Ulldor deciding that attempting to get to the King and the Oracle was less interesting than getting his petty revenge on the man who had nearly managed to take him hostage. The world really was a small, small place.

After some small talk in the rain, which already was kind of silly to begin with, Ignis found a way to once again ask for a boat.

Half an hour later and in a simple rowing boat, Lunafreya broke into a sad giggling fit when he told her what exactly any of this had meant.

“Unbelievable.”

They left it at that, especially since the moment Ignis set foot on the remnants of the altar, his hand started searing with pain again. But the woman really had spoken the truth—something was here, and it was decidedly not happy to be intruded upon like that.

* * *

The way Ignis acted really only left her one conclusion to reach. The way he kept reaching for one of his hands, the way they wandered up to his face as if he was expecting something to happen—the second they set foot on solid ground again Ignis let out a sigh so loud it might as well have shattered the world around him. Luna herself had delivered the Ring of the Lucii to Noctis. Had pressed it into his cold and clammy hands while her lungs on fire suddenly started going numb. Had used whatever strength remained in her as her blood and magic left her to ensure that Noctis’ cold and stuff fingers would remained curled around it because there was no way in hell that Ardyn wasn’t going to return to mess with Noctis at the very least or to kill him at the very worst. But that was no longer her concern—lies, she was very concerned and died fearing that Noctis would join her immediately afterwards. Conflicting emotions—because he _would_ join her eventually. Perhaps not in this non-existence of no rest as her world went dark only to light up whenever Noctis needed her.

But that ring, that thrice-cursed ring King Regis had so delicately handed over to her before facing his death at the hands of Glauca with a dignity her mother was never afforded as she jumped between her son and the MT, between dearly beloved Ravus and the General’s sword. That thrice-cursed Ring of the Lucii that had taken lives before her very eyes, after she had deliberately and knowingly tricked one of the turncoats to putting it on. That accursed thing that the likely dying Nyx Ulric ripped from her hands with the last of his energy only to shoot upwards straight and unhurt a few heartbeats later, protecting him and her from that sword descending upon her as it had stopped in front of Ravus’ face twelve years ago after tearing through their mother.

The Ring of the Lucii that Nyx had returned to her safekeeping, the ring she knew could have solved all her problems if she got the kings to agree with her—or the ring that would have ended her suffering before this agonising death upon the Altar of the Tidemother.

Passed into Noctis’ hands. Left his hands.

Hands.

“Ignis,” she whispered as they both stood there paralysed by memories and dread, “you put on the Ring of the Lucii to protect Noctis, didn’t you?”

And all of a sudden, Ignis came undone. Eleven years had come and passed, had gone from bad to worse to kind of not really okay, and the man crumpled to his knees without as much as a sound. He dropped his hands from his face, faint blue fire once again dancing across his features; his sightless eyes burning similarly but with a glow that should not have been possible. Magic blood had died out, but as long as these remnants of the past were left unattended, Ignis Scientia would have the skill to sense magic if brought close to these remnants.

A leftover shred of a power that in theory should have never left the hands of the Lucis Caelum family, but here Ignis sat, the sole survivor of that magic. A man who had offered something to the Lucii, a man who had walked out of it with his life but not with much else. Yes, he had defended the king—only to have him die ten years later, a sacrifice that the world needed and that the world oh so readily gobbled up. And Ignis and the others remained, the only witnesses to Noctis’ ascension as far as he let them. Noctis died alone and Ignis, Prompto and Gladiolus were the ones left to pry him from his throne, were the ones who wandered this mostly empty city to meet with the Glaives there.

“But I wasn’t the only one who did,” he whispered back after a few minutes of silence, of sitting there as if all energy had left him suddenly. “I wasn’t the only one who….”

The roar of the sea and the rain was deafening. Just as deafening as the silence had been before it had been broken by a gunshot echoing through the streets. As deafening as the crackle of familiar magic was that built up to separate her from King Regis—a man she so desperately wanted to save because after going through losing her mother like that and then losing the brother she had known all her life in the aftermath of that was something she wished upon no one.

Where the mist had been almost bewitching back at Cape Caem it was terrifying to see now. Magic that was not supposed to be here, lingering in a place where the three kinds of magic had almost violently met. She helped Ignis stand back up—the man looked absolutely dead and devoid of life as he followed her. Up ahead, the Altar of the Tidemother’s highest point, barely anything more than bloodied rocks jutting out of the sea foam. And wafting about around them was that mist again, except this time Luna felt it before she saw it. An electric crackle, like lightning ready to strike, went through the air as they approached the proper Altar, stopping short just before the stairs. Ignis bristled as another crackle sizzled through the air.

There was nothing up ahead where she had stood except for the cracks on the stairs telling the story of something—or someone—crashing into there with enough force.

She knew that whatever it was they would come across here would be something haunting. Something that was familiar to Ignis perhaps, just as Marshal Leonis had been. Some sort of cursed creature that was falling apart but resembled Noctis just as a final nail in the coffins the two of them had built for their hearts long ago.

Instead the mist wavered. Ignis let out a groan of discomfort as the magical flames whisking across his face also engulfed one of his hands this time. Blinding blue.

The sound of glass shattering.

For a split moment she saw the flickering lights of a city under attack again, smelled the smoke billowing in from the crashed car, from the burning skyscrapers. Heard the crunching noise of metal grinding against concrete while the blue flash of a wall and the crackle of electricity faded. Heard the man crack his neck again.

She reached out for a hand that wasn’t there only for the mist to churn and turn, electricity crackling in the rain.

“You weren’t the only one who put on the Ring of the Lucii to protect someone they swore to protect,” Luna whispered and turned around, back towards the broken walkway that once connected the Altar of the Tidemother to the rest of Altissia. But now it wasn’t connected any longer, there was no immediate way out of this situation since their rudimentary rowing boat was behind the mist that was furiously crackling now. “There was someone before you who managed to convince the Lucii with a vow to protect a future you were willing to never see come to pass.”

Ignis only lowered his head, kept his back turned to the scene he did not see. “They offer, and all you can do is accept. Eternal darkness and knowing the bitter end to the story for the strength to stand, to fight back, the power to protect….”

“A life by dawn for the power to guard the future,” whispered the mist and everything fell into place.

Nyx Ulric looked… rough. This was not the man who had handed her the Ring of the Lucii again with a confident smile on her face, this was not the man who entrusted her safety to his friend. This was the man who had fought a losing battle against the man who had murdered his king, this was a soldier who had fallen in the line of battle.

Cor Leonis had looked younger, more powerful—Nyx in return looked battered and beaten and tired, with barely concealed fury on his features.

“So, you made it to Altissia after all, princess.” Even his voice sounded like it was filtered through thick, heavy smoke. Crackling with static.

She couldn’t even look him in the eyes. Lunafreya Nox Fleuret after Insomnia had willingly marched on, knowing that it would only destroy her in the end. She had parted ways with Libertus Ostium, the man Nyx had passed his duty to. The Lunafreya of Insomnia had nearly willingly destroyed herself on several occasions, desperate to prevent the deaths she knew were coming. King Regis did not deserve to die as he did in the end. She had so desperately hoped that Nyx would live through his hubris of putting on the Ring of the Lucii, that he would reunite with Libertus in Galahd. That one day in another life she and Noctis would be there to visit them in whatever they made out of the ruins of their lives.

“So I did,” she said gently and took a deep breath. Nyx had been someone who had understood her. “I did as was needed of me.”

A furious hiss of electricity finally made Ignis turn around, his unseeing eyes perfectly locked onto where this apparition of Nyx Ulric had manifested. He did not see, no, but he definitely knew where the energy was strongest. The centre of this thunderstorm was the man of the Kingsglaive who had given his all to protect a future he would never see come to pass. He had died for the sunrise just as Noctis had, just as so many others had.

“Tell me, princess,” her title, something no one but the Lucians used because in Niflheim she was but the dethroned princess who would never rule her country just as her brother was the dethroned and furious crown prince, “was it worth it in the end? All the suffering? All the agony as you marched across the lands, as you watched your brother walk away as he effectively handed you over to the Altissian government for safekeeping? Was the future really worth a knife in your guts?”

By the heavens, his skin was cracked and scarred. He looked like he had been on fire—but considering that she had not seen the final throes of the battle between him and General Glauca, he might as well have burned. It made sense; after all Ignis seemingly was on fire as well. Magical fire, actual fire; fire that ate away and left nothing but ashen skin behind.

“Of course it was,” she whispered, fully knowing that he saw through her lies. The future of the planet was a goal too great for a mortal to comprehend, and even as much as she tried to play the benevolent Messenger, she was just a mortal. Just a mortal who had loved too much and given too much only to receive nothing in return. Someone who had heralded the future only to not be there to see it. A broken ace, a mute Oracle.

At the very least he did not attack her for lying, even if the anger that flashed across his face were seething hot and burnt into her heart. That heart she was borrowing, that heart that beat so fast and loudly now that she was certain Ignis and Nyx both heard it. Loud enough that it could shatter this fragile equilibrium.

It was Ignis who broke the silence, who threw another lot onto the scale. “Are we truly permitted to ask her if it was worth it in the end? We, who sacrificed so much for nothing in return?”

And all of a sudden, the anger vanished. The man only looked tired, proud perhaps but still very tired. A person who had died fighting something or someone; the same tiredness that Ignis wore on his face when he thought no one was watching him. Two men who had worn the Ring of the Lucii despite not being of royal blood, both of them in service to a king now dead. One for the future—one for a single man.

“That was the destiny I was prepared to do everything for,” she said after a few more too loud heartbeats, “the end of the road that I was afraid to walk without having done anything and losing everything.”

“You were always going to lose everything. That’s why you were so damned reckless, huh.”

She nodded, and Ignis put a hand on her shoulder. They were both completely soaked to the bone at this point, and the rain had plastered his hair to his face. But even so the fire seemed to dance across his features as it had danced that night in Insomnia, eerie yet bewitching in equal parts. For so long Insomnia had been her dream of a peaceful world and it was burning and falling apart—and the only person who fought for it rather than fleeing it was a sole member of the Kingsglaive. A man who had been betrayed, who had gotten to his very limits in that night. Just as Ignis had made it to the Altar of the Tidemother despite the fact that at some point he was more exhausted than anything else. A man who had fought back the much stronger High Commander with seemingly sheer determination alone.

They weren’t really alike, character-wise. Which made the Lucii’s choice in the end even more fascinating.

Then again, devotion and determination went a long way even between rather different people. It connected the princess, the upper class noble and the refugee; they had all been determined to see their story to an end, even if the end did not satisfy them in any way, shape, or form.

There was no denying that none of them were pleased with how it had all come to pass in the end. Luna had wanted to _live,_ a desire that had not manifested until she had sealed her own fate and all her brother, the man who had done nothing but work against the gods to spare her from that fate, had been able to do was telling her to go walk her path to the bitter end. Ignis had sworn an oath to protect without thinking twice about it, to stand beside a king he knew would die to make the sun rise; and perhaps as final punch in the guts had to live past all that. Nyx was a soldier who owed a man he had watched die everything, and while he had no attachments to the city or its people he had still fought for their future.

Luna blinked a few times.

Then she started laughing.

“I suppose we made it, Nyx Ulric of the Kingsglaive.”

“Beg pardon?”

The cold was starting to settle in, and a shiver went through her. Still, she beamed at the ghastly apparition of a man who still seemed torn between being angry and being absolutely crestfallen and he only shot her a confused look. The crystalline mist quivered in anticipation of what would happen next.

“You kept me safe. We both made it to Altissia after all. Not exactly the way he would have wanted us to, but we did make it.”

The Glaive blinked a few times before bursting into laughter. It wasn’t happy-sounding, but there was only so much that a man who looked like he had burnt to death could do without it sounding horribly hollow. She could have sworn she saw a cloud of dust break off his skin as he bent over to steady himself, dust that rose but vanished into misty blue, wafting around the place.

“Geez, you haven’t changed a bit, have you, princess? I guess we did. We really did.” He snorted as he sat down on the stone. “Y’hear that, King Regis? Made it!”

Ignis also shivered—they would likely both get sick after this.

“Say, Nyx?”

“I know what you’re gonna ask, princess. Lemme ask you both a question before you start, though.”

She nodded.

“Ignis Scientia, was it?” Nyx didn’t ask for a confirmation, and instead shook his head. “Nothing bad, don’t worry. Was what you wanted really worth trading in part of your soul for power?”

For a long moment, Ignis remained quiet. Then he slowly raised the hand that also had flames dancing across it. There was something about that movement that made her shudder not just from the cold but from how trained it was. As if he had spent years with the phantom pain of having worn the Ring of the Lucii.

“I suppose you’re expecting a hearty ‘fuck no’ out of me, Ulric; but I’m afraid I have to disappoint. Noct’s life is—was—worth everything. My sight, my senses, my body piece by piece. Even if it only delayed the inevitable—I would have paid every price to see him safe. And in that moment they demanded my senses, my ability to see anything but my ever-returning nightmares of the same thing, over and over. I traded that in for the power to protect in that moment. I would do it again. Though this time I would barter my life for his, without thinking twice, without even a moment of hesitation.”

Nyx only nodded, as if he understood exactly what Ignis was talking about. The Ring of the Lucii was what bound these two men together, something that Luna didn’t exactly understand. There was something going on here that only they understood, something that made no sense to her because she had not put the ring on.

“… Princess? You reckon they’ll let you stay, or will you have to go again once you’ve slaved away at the gods’ behest?”

Ignis tilted his head a little, his sightless eyes piercing right through her. Nyx meanwhile had barely moved, only looked into her face. She hated that she looked like a kid; Diana and Lunafreya had no similarities outside of the blonde hair. She wanted to stand here as their equal and not this kid running around on a leash because the gods let her.

“I… have a choice.”

“You do?”

“When all is done and said… again… I will get to go if I want to. Or I will get to stay. That is what the Glacian told me when I awoke.”

She noticed how Ignis curled his hands into fists. It was just enough to scare her a little.

Nyx only nodded. “I see. Well, that’s better than what I feared this would be.”

His anger had only been directed at the gods forcing her back—not at her.

* * *

They had decided to stick to verbal attacks over actual swords and the like thrown at each other. They were always at a stalemate when the weapons came into play, though Noctis quickly realised there was something Ardyn wasn’t doing deliberately. It was something that he kept close to his head, a weapon he refused to summon forth as if he was scared of breaking it.

After what felt like hours of angrily simmering silence between them once they were done cursing each other out, Noctis moved where he sat. Far enough away from Ardyn to easily dodge a random thrown weapon, but close enough to retaliate in kind if necessary. The man definitely let out a quiet and annoyed hiss when Noctis moved, but he was about to aggravate him even further so there was no point in trying to remain civil and keeping movement to a minimum.

“So, when are you gonna use your full power against me?”

“Believe it or not, Noctis,” Ardyn hissed like a predator ready to strike back, “I have neither the intention nor the desire to tear you apart right now. Just stay still and quiet as we wait for your dimwitted beloved and your suicidal liar friend to—“

“Fucking watch your tongue, old man.”

“O… _old man.”_

“Old coward too chicken to beat some respect into his snotty great-great-great-something-whatever grandnephew!”

Noctis tried to turn his head to see Ardyn’s reaction, but in that exact moment he felt something against his throat. Ardyn had moved faster than expected, crouching not too far away from Noctis now—the man had somehow moved behind him. Noctis only saw the glittering crystalline blade of a weapon he couldn’t exactly identify right now; it was pressed against his throat after all. And dead or not, there was absolutely no doubt that they _could_ somehow shatter again. Their entire existence was alike to that time Noctis had shattered his cup as a kid and taped it together with shaky hands. Poor Ignis had nearly had a heart attack when he saw that mess of tape, broken ceramic and that one cut on Noctis’ hand. Except that this time the gods had taped him and his nemesis back together and left them in the dark. Quite literally so.

The blade started shaking.

“What, you so old you’re starting to get jittery?”

And all of a sudden, Ardyn withdrew it. “No. The dead do not get the jitters, Noctis.”

The entire place was shaking. Noctis jumped to his feet and turned around. Ardyn stood there rooted firmly to the invisible ground beneath their feet, but his weapon was definitely shaking now. The scythe—really, Noctis should have guessed that one—looked like a normal Armiger weapon. Not that Noctis had ever read about a king using something like this; this was likely Ardyn’s personal weapon or something he had built for himself with the energies of other royal arms. Like Frankenstein’s monster, except it was a lifeless crystalline weapon.

He barely had a chance to react again. All he heard was a very small “Ah, shit,” from Ardyn, heard the telltale sound of a warp—and then the world turned violently red for a split moment. Then when the vast emptiness of the place shifted back into his view, he heard something stomp down. The entire place shook, and Noctis could only let out a confused noise as he took the hand Ardyn offered him.

“What should leave the dead quaking is a Diamond Weapon. Quite literally quaking.”

He blinked. The first flame had spat out a Cerberus in its death throes. Noctis should have expected something much worse this time, but staring at one of these creatures now up close was definitely not high on the list of things he had ever wanted to do. Prompto’s hushed whispers as he told them what had happened to him after he had fallen off the train had included these things. Apparently the empire’s top scientists had created these Daemons as something to lay utter waste to everything around it, though it was definitely not capable of doing anything else.

Prompto had muttered something about having seen some of the more detailed reports, how he had remembered the photos people fleeing from Insomnia had taken as the city fell. Enormous size—itty-bitty brain, as his best friend had put it.

But there was something else that Prompto mentioned. “Hey, wait a fucking second. You helped create this thing.”

“Noctis, dearest,” Ardyn hissed slowly as he took a step backwards, “why the hell do you think I am quaking? This thing is nowhere near on the same level as a half-dead Cerberus.”

Noctis only rolled his eyes. “Well, you made it. I sure didn’t. You know its weak points. I’m the one willing to fight while you’re shaking. Your move, Accursed.”

“Cheeky bastard of a snotty great-something-whatever grandnephew.”

“You know I am. So?”

Ardyn let out a long sigh as he pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “It does not seem to have noticed us yet. These things are not exactly the brightest of the bunch.” That sounded exactly like what Prompto had reported. “The further away we are, the more liable they are to attack with a barrage. Counterproductive, given that we run on limited amounts of power.”

“Whoa, hold on. Limited amounts?”

“Ugh. Really. Do we really have to hold this elemental lesson right now. What do you and yours even call it. Elemental fatigue.”

“What?”

“Gods damn it. … Stasis. That was what the Niffs called it. Believe it or not, the Scourge is nearly gone. I do not run on inexhaustible fumes any longer. Relevant in the sense that you and I will inevitably exhaust our innate powers, limited as they are without the Crystal. Our best bet to take it down would be to tear down its core; we do lack something of equal size to make that easier, however.”

Noctis frowned as they backed out of the creature’s immediate sight again. The entire place shook whenever it moved; only the Archaean had had a similar effect on the surrounding area. He didn’t even want to imagine how it must have been inside Insomnia that fateful night with these things trotting about and destroying buildings.

“So. Brute force. Not exactly fun.”

Ardyn rolled his eyes. “I did tell you the gods were no fun. Somewhere between calling you a waste of time and an utter joke, I believe.”

“Well, where’s the core then, genius? And what do you suggest we do? Go in guns blazing?”

The man lowered his scythe a little before dismissing it. For a second Noctis feared that the Niff creation had noticed that bright flash, but nothing of the sort happened. It only stomped down once more, and he and his unwilling partner even bounced up a little.

“Summon your Armiger all you want, it will swat you out of the air. Sneaking up from behind will also not work. The blind sides are, ironically, the sides.” With that, Ardyn grabbed one of Noctis’ arms. He recoiled from that sudden rough contact but Ardyn did not let go when Noctis voiced his discomfort with a small noise. “The shoulders. From there,” he traced the path with Noctis’ arm, “a well-timed warp into the empty space in front of it and unleashing barrages at the same time ought to do the trick. Using its own tactics against it generally confuses lesser Daemons or non-intelligent ones.”

Even Ignis managed to deliver a tactics drill less dry than that. And Ignis had been infamous in the Citadel for his unbelievably dry explanations when it came to something like tactics. He was less dry around Noctis, but even the horror stories that everyone else told him about his childhood friend sounded like the most flowery prose compared to Ardyn right now. Noctis yanked his arm out of Ardyn’s hand and frowned at the man. Ardyn only frowned back.

Without exchanging another word they nodded at one another, the fact that they had tried to beat the lights out of the other not too long ago suddenly forgotten. There was something terribly dramatic about working with the enemy, something that Noctis kind of hated. He had been forced into unlikely alliances before, but this one really had to be the worst joke of them all.

Ardyn was efficient, that was the only good thing about him. He was insufferable otherwise, melodramatic and egocentric, loud and altogether so stuck in his own little world that it was hard to understand him when he did speak. Half of what he said were taunts and jabs either way, but so backwards that they sounded like compliments sometimes. Noctis could absolutely not deny that this man was sharply intelligent, and it made sense that someone with such amounts of egocentrism could easily travel the world just to keep track of his supposed nemesis. It barely fit the picture that knowledge had painted—had Ardyn truly been a benevolent and selfless person once? It really did not seem to fit; but then again hatred turned people into ugly things and parodies of themselves.

Noctis had been nearly blinded by it. Ardyn had been blinded by it long ago.

At least they landed on solid ground. This creature was definitely man-made; it was just Niflheim tech. Noctis hadn’t considered that. There were plenty of strange-looking Daemons around, so one that looked like this was not exactly out there. Ignis had even assumed that these things were extremely mutated kinds of Iron Giants when they had taken a closer look at the photos that cropped up all over the country’s newspapers and news channels in the days following the destruction of Insomnia. But landing on almost solid metal and seeing where it had been put together was almost freakier than hearing the crunch of metal manifesting somewhere in the dark where he couldn’t see it properly.

Another thing he noticed next was that Ardyn moved a lot more precise than he had had during their fight in Insomnia now. He had been frantic flurries of strikes, countless warps, blasts and kicks back then, but he had lacked a certain precision. Dodging a kick was not that hard, but seeing that Ardyn also apparently suffered from the same weak leg as the rest of Noctis’ family did was reassuring somewhat. It had helped him see past that man attacking him and mocking him all the way through; had reminded him that Ardyn had been human once.

Now the man moved according to what he knew, even gestured at Noctis to stand still.

The metal hull really made it hard for that creature to notice them.

He wondered about what kind of barrage Ardyn could have meant—then realised that it was redundant to wonder. There were no elements he could draw in this void; the stars were not something he could draw power from. The only sort of barrage they could use right now were the crystalline weapons of their bloodline.

“On three. One.”

The Daemon moved and something about the place they were perched on changed. Was this thing… winding up?

“Ardyn…!?”

“Two.”

“Ardyn, I don’t think this is a good—“

The man grabbed Noctis’ arm again with an angry glare on his face. With the other he tossed his scythe. A red trail, kind of like a horribly haunted boomerang, glittered as Ardyn narrowed his eyes.

“Too late. Three.”

And again the world turned horribly red and wrong, and Noctis understood one last thing before his focus returned somewhere in thin air. Ardyn had warped him out of danger earlier.

Maybe there was that kind and noble healer somewhere underneath all those layers of bitterness. Noctis cracked a grin as he aimed.

He likely was imagining that familiar voice joining together with what sounded like Luna.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ironic ending note: wrote about ignis getting sick. father came down with stomach bug.
> 
> nanowrimo illuminati are real and they made me realise i cant see SHIT now that i have the former living room tv in my room


	4. MOVEMENT III: the elegy of the sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in war's cradle, a soul weeps where soldiers stood
> 
> in void's silence, darkened wings beat over anger

She had always imagined coming back home after succeeding at something to be more… happy. The continent up ahead were familiar grounds, her beloved childhood home. But as they hopped off that boat from Altissia to check out the newly build small port down on the very edge of the Niflheim continent, all Luna felt was an insurmountable amount of dread. She couldn’t even imagine what Tenebrae looked like now, after having apparently been lit on fire during a Daemon mass-migration from the labs in Gralea. That was all Ignis could tell her about the state of Tenebrae before endless dark had fallen—he hadn’t been able to _see_ how it looked after all. He had only mentioned the acrid fumes of Daemonic fire as Fenestala Manor and the surrounding forests burned.

She could imagine that.

This little port town was charming, at the very least. She heard quite a few accents and dialects around town; from the general Niff mainland dialects to something more specific; even heard a heavy Galahdan drawl at some point followed by a chipper upper Gralean quip. More than one person stopped to whisper about the blind man and the girl—there were plenty of blind men, but Luna knew that there were none that were as famous as Ignis.

He only asked for directions once and that was all he said in public.

The rest of their march to the nearby train station was quiet, with Luna pointing out the occasional old-looking building between the new ones. Ignis seemed to be deep in thought even as he bought their train tickets—Luna immediately noticed that once again they were travelling first class. Was Ignis doing this because technically speaking she was a princess and used to the highest amount of comfort? She knew for a fact that the Scientia family was well-off and Ignis had little to no use for his money even as the trade slowly died down across Eos while money made a strong comeback now that resources weren’t as sparse as before.

She watched a wheat field sway in the distance as they waited for the trains. Something was soothing about that familiar gold shimmer; Niflheim was a beautiful continent before the empire had driven it to near ruin. Tenebrae was a green paradise in the middle, between the wheat field coasts, the dry flatlands, and the ice-tipped mountains further down south. But as the empire rose to power, slowly but surely everything had been turned into a part of the war machine. The flatlands were littered with digs and military buildings, all to ensure that Niflheim was always on top of their game. The Tenebraen country had been taken over long before Luna had been born, the Oracle and their families given a comparatively small strip of the country to continue living in as truly neutral territory. That was something all emperors had respected—the fact that the Oracles did not exactly care about the war and were supposed to stand as connecting point between Messengers and the Hexatheon. But while her ancestors were afforded a small piece of freedom, the rest of the country had become a cog in the machine that ensured that the country did not go hungry. And when Fenestala Manor fell….

She shuddered as they boarded the train. Luna had not really travelled with them in the past, usually being carted around by the empire in one way or another. She was used to the cold insides of airships, neutral and so horrifically sterile, with MTs staring at nothing as they waited for proper orders once they reached the deployment sites. But this train, apparently rebuilt in Gralea with the help of a handful mercenaries from the infamous Highwind group, was… warm. Welcoming.

The first class cabin was entirely empty except for her and Ignis; not that Luna minded but that took some of the warmness of the place away.

“Ignis, I, uh,” she began after they had been going for an hour with nothing of interest happening, “I’m not sure….”

Ignis sat there with his eyes closed, his cane clutched like a lifeline and his face turned towards the window. She had assumed he had been lost in his own little world since they boarded, but she saw his jaw unclench.

“You are not obligated to stay here in silence, Lady Lunafreya. Feel free to wander about.”

“No, that’s not it. I’m… not sure how to bring this up but… if you’re. The first class. If you’re spending this money just because you feel obligated to because of who I was once—as long as we are on the road, I am Diana and not Lunafreya. Treat me like you would treat… any child my age.”

He snorted. “Noctis did insist on the same thing. Not once did he ask for the special treatment because of his birth. It made travelling a little harder than strictly necessary sometimes, but it did usually mean we were not spending all of our poor earnings on hotel rooms at the very least.” Ignis leaned backwards with a melancholic expression on his face. “Rest assured, I am not giving you a special treatment. I do prefer solitude when on the road these days. And before you worry about my family’s coffers; as sole inheritor to both my mother’s and my uncle’s fortunes I am better off than you would believe now that money is making a comeback. But still, you are not obligated to stay here and stare out of the window in silence until our next stop out of solidarity.”

With that he fell silent again.

At first she considered staying with him, but after another ten minutes of silence she excused herself politely.

The rest of the train was a lot more lively than the first class car; not as many people as there had been back before darkness, but enough people to make it feel like this world wasn’t recovering from catastrophe still.

But the more time she spent wandering the train, the more she started to realise that the world would not stop recovering during her lifetime. Diana was young enough that she might see stability come back again, but people like Ignis and the oh-so-infamous Aranea Highwind would not see anything but reconstruction for the rest of their lives. The children enjoyed the sun, rushed around the train cars—and the parents were all quiet, deep in thought. Not unlike Ignis, actually.

She overheard someone mentioning that they had been on a train similar to this almost 11 years ago, a train bound for Gralea like this one. They had only made it to Tenebrae back then before excessive damage and attacks on the train forced them to stay behind with Commodore Highwind’s mercenaries while the King of Light and his companions continued their way to the city. They had lived through history to tell the story, and now they were bound for Gralea again, even though they knew that their son was long dead. After all, why would he be alive? He had never reached Lestallum much like many of the capital city slackers.

After hearing that, Luna turned around and almost fled back to the silence and loneliness of the first class car. Sat down next to Ignis instead of opposite him this time around. She almost considered acting according to her body’s actual age and cling to his side, maybe even bury her face in his shirt. She fought that urge for a few minutes before Ignis exhaled loudly.

“I assume you understand why I prefer the quiet seclusion to staying with the people now?”

“Y-Yes.”

He did not say anything else and instead only raised his arm.

Luna took that offer and enjoyed sitting next to someone for once, even if his arm was rather heavy on her shoulders. The downsides of being a pre-teen child, she presumed.

* * *

The Diamond Weapon went down with a horrific roar. Noctis and Ardyn had both crashed onto the ground after spending all their energy; surely enough the man had not been lying. Those were the symptoms of being in Stasis; from the dizziness to the definite feeling that something was moving. But still, as Noctis struggled back to his feet and offered Ardyn a hand to get away from the collapsing Daemon, he had to wonder why the gods would limit them like this. There was no point in demanding they do something that required energy and then not offering that energy in the same breath. He was starting to _understand_ why Ardyn had refused to do anything for the gods.

But they watched as the creature went down, chests heaving as if they had just run a marathon instead of merely unleashed all they had into the core of a Daemon. Ardyn eventually plopped back down and crossed his legs.

Noctis waited, and waited, and waited.

Nothing happened.

The void remained a void, the stars glittering as they had had after the Cerberus had gone down and for as long as they had quietly marched through that utter and devastating silence.

“Uh.”

Ardyn had crossed his arms in the meanwhile and had started humming a tune that sounded familiar. Noctis couldn’t exactly place why it sounded so familiar, but he let the man do as he pleased. There was no point in immediately starting another fight with him over something as idiotic as a hummed song.

But after what felt like an eternity, Noctis also sat down. The stars were their silent companions, and Ardyn’s song was starting to grate his already paper-thin nerves into non-existence. Much like the void around them, Noctis thought as he slammed a hand on Ardyn’s mouth to shut him up.

“Just. One moment. Let me think in silence.”

Ardyn rolled his eyes; he said nothing and made no other noise.

“Shouldn’t something have happened? Like, a path to the next place we have to be for yet another idiotic Daemon spawn?”

The Accursed shrugged.

“Or something other than the stars? Maybe a moon?”

Ardyn shrugged again, this time with a grin on his face that effectively said ‘be careful what you wish for’, and Noctis did not like that the slightest.

“Come on, man. Anything. Silence time’s over. Tell me what’s going through your shitty head.”

He said… nothing. He just sat there, his eyes focused on the void around them—or perhaps the stars? Noctis tried to figure out what it was that Ardyn was looking at, but he came up with nothing. This entire whole lot of nothing was starting to piss him off, actually.

But just before he could explode, Ardyn put a hand on his mouth.

“Come now, Noctis. You’re shaking with rage—are you starting to understand why I did not want to do anything for these delightful liars and life-destroyers? Are you starting to understand what it is like to spend an eternity in darkness with nothing but your own thoughts and memories to keep you company? Well, it still is _nothing_ compared to what I went through. Still, since you once more cannot see what happened… You aren’t the most perceptive.”

Oh, he really considered biting into that shitty man’s hands right now. Considered gnawing his fingers off one by one only to spit them back into his face. Noctis did nothing of the sort and only glared into Ardyn’s face—wait.

Ardyn had been strangely transparent since he had first woken up. Noctis himself had been like that as well. But now the Accursed seemed more… solid. Not exactly solid enough to pass for a living being, but solid enough that it was harder to see the stars through him now.

“Ah, so you understand.”

He only rolled his eyes.

“Well then. The next leg of the journey sounded like we were in for a triumphant return to the Niflheim continent. Wheresoever that may be.”

Ardyn got up, and Noctis followed suit. But the Accursed made no move this time around; he only crossed his arms and closed his eyes.

“Come now. You know the stars better than I do. You lead the way this time, Noct.”

He huffed. It was indeed rather easy to find where Niflheim would be; considering that the only possible place the Daemon could have spawned at was the Altar of the Tidemother. The gods were awful enough to send Ignis to where he lost his sight and Luna to where she lost her life. Which meant that the only way they could go was towards the star sign of the Conductor. A cluster of stars that was only visible from the Niflheim continent.

“As long as you don’t shove a knife into my back.”

“I’m hurt you would assume I would do something so abhorrent! Who do you think I am, Somnus Lucis Caelum?”

Ugh. Noctis _hated_ this guy.

* * *

There were plenty of places that they could have had to go to. Ignis would have been lying to himself if he had not been dreading the stop n Cartanica; Cape Caem and the Altar of the Tidemother had certainly felt like a retread of the path he, the others and Noctis had taken nearly a dozen years ago. But Cartanica, now no longer a desolate mining down with an even more desolate abandoned mine, passed without issues. The train’s mandatory stop there only had him reminiscing about the mine back then. But thinking about it too much only filled him with dread and anger—and the always present sadness. Dread because he had had to rely on Prompto so much despite barely knowing him compared to Noctis and Gladio. Anger because of Gladio’s insistence that Noctis had to walk on with his head held high despite the way he hurt just because Ignis had gotten himself injured in the line of duty. And the sadness, the melancholy that always surrounded any memory of Noctis these days.

The slouch. The angry sloshing through the muddy water, the impatient growls whenever Gladio insisted that he had gone too far away from the group. Ignis knew better than anyone that Noctis pacing around like that meant that he was upset, scouting the immediate area to ensure that nothing bad would happen. He had started doing that in the aftermath of a failed assassination attempt that had gotten a rather young member of the Crownsguard hurt; Noctis always paced around when he wanted to ensure that nothing escaped his view.

Cartanica was… nicer now. No agony. No fear. No festering hurt hidden underneath layers upon layers of scorn. A bunch of children bowled past him and Luna, then stopped and apparently looked him over. They even went as far as asking if the girl wanted to come enjoy the view with them while the train was stopped, and Ignis only waved his hand through the air.

“I am her travelling companion, not her prison keeper. Try not to run into anyone, Diana.”

If the world had been kinder, perhaps he could have come through here with Luna and Noctis on a return to Tenebrae. In a world where the peace treaty had happened, where Tenebrae would have remained in the empire’s hands but perhaps the Deputy High Commander Ravus Nox Fleuret would have been waiting for them in Fenestala Manor to celebrate the wedding somewhere more private. Oracle Lunafreya and Prince Noctis, a dream wedding in Altissia, no need for the Wall. King Regis still on his throne, and the old currency on the way out instead of stamped into the ground along with the city in a night flat.

He sat down on a bench and let out a long sigh. Pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to enjoy the warm afternoon breeze.

There was no way to enjoy Cartanica. He just couldn’t. Even the royal tomb down near the tree that the residents were starting to treat a lot better now only brought up the bitter memories of a slicing sound, of a man landing to come to their aid only to limp away after their adversary had fallen.

By the gods, all of Eos was a hellhole to him.

* * *

Ignis was unusually quiet when they boarded the train again. Now, the man wasn’t one for much conversation to begin with, but something about his entire mood had gone from enjoying the silence to gloomy.

Noctis had always described him as serious to a fault, sharp—and very fun to be around. Childhood friend or no, Noctis had mentioned time and time again that Ignis’ brand of humour was either the most groan-worthy of them all, or scathing enough to leave someone completely dumbfounded where they stood. She had seen him smile before, but not even once had seen one of these big grins that Noctis said Ignis usually kept reserved for when he was alone with someone.

Then again, perhaps this kind of smile had died together with Noctis. Ravus, too, had stopped smiling brightly after their mother died the way she did. She barely remembered what her own brother’s smiles looked like, and Luna was also hit with an intense urge to sit down and brood.

She chose to curl her hands into fists instead. Oracles did not scream, even if she was only a kid on a journey to find her mother now. For a few hours she watched how the afternoon continued while thinking absolutely nothing.

When the golden light of the sunset fell into the train car, Ignis started moving ever so slightly. He turned his head occasionally, clenched and unclenched his jaw, even went as far as cracking his stiff shoulders. Eventually the sudden movement made her uncomfortable, and Luna cleared her throat.

“Are you alright? Do you think something’s coming up?”

Ignis snapped his eyes open. “I’m fine, Lady Lunafreya. As for… I suppose. I cannot really tell; something’s definitely going on but I can’t quite… not while the train is moving.”

She raised an eyebrow, fully aware that Ignis could not see her. “Do you… do you reckon it is on the train with us?”

For a long moment the silence that she had since gotten used to filled the train car again. She saw how the man raised his eyebrows in what might have been confusion, saw how he relaxed his tense body. Then he shook his head. “No. Not on the train.”

As he had explained when they were trudging through the rain back to Weskham’s place in Altissia, Nyx Ulric had apparently moved about rather frantically. Ignis hadn’t considered it before, but as it had turned out now that he had thought about it, the man had likely been warping. Since these remnants were invisible to people without a high enough sensitivity to magic, those who could sense bits of it were hit with a dull blast to the head every time the remnant that had taken Nyx’s appearance warped around. Ignis, with his high sensitivity thanks to having worn the Ring of the Lucii, had started feeling like he had been repeatedly clubbed in the face.

He definitely did not look like he was going to keel over and throw up again.

“But maybe following it.”

“Following it…?”

“It would explain why the feeling keeps popping up and vanishing again. If we are to find another warping remnant, they can only go so far before running out of steam. And it does not seem like they are ever truly catching up with the train.”

Warping.

She had not spent a lot of time thinking about it. It was a skill that was reserved for the most innately skilled people; generally not found within the Wall. Galahadans like Nyx Ulric and his friends had had the skill to warp, and likely General Glauca had been able to as long as he was out of the armour as well. A cold shudder ran down her spine as she imagined a handful vengeful Glaives attempting to catch up with the train because she was on it. The one whose inability to catch on manipulation had cost him his life when she handed him the Ring of the Lucii. She could hear the gun clicking as he pointed it at her head again, could smell his flesh burning as she pried the ring off his fingers and let the burning corpse fall all while Nyx had been on the ground clutching his sides in agony, with a small puddle of blood forming underneath him from where the bullets had torn through his leg.

An even more terrifying thought was that it was King Regis, even if that man had reportedly never been that good at warping.

And worst of all, perhaps another of the Lucii. Perhaps all of them.

Ignis had closed his eyes again in the meanwhile. “Whatever the case, we will not be able to investigate until our next stop in two days. You might as well consider your blessings and try to sleep, Lady Lunafreya.”

Her blessing was that she could not feel magic. Not in this form, at the very least.

She pressed her lips together and made a sound of agreement, even if she really did not want to spend her next two days on a train knowing that something might happen when they next stopped.

* * *

“Your impatience is truly a marvel. Were you always like this, or was this something you gained upon your untimely demise?”

Noctis was definitely ignoring him Capital I ignoring him. The joy had been sucked out of annoying his nemesis by now, and Ardyn and Noctis were both annoyed as they continued their march through the dimly lit void beyond.

He had contemplated death a lot as time passed. After being turned away at the gates time and time again he had started ignoring the gatekeeper and her words, had turned around at the River Styx and started walking back because the ferrywoman would not be taking him across either way. She had said that something dark had latched onto him and that was why she could not let him pass, but as time went by, Ardyn had started to realise that something even darker had started taking root in his heart. By the time he saw electric light for the first time in his life he had spent so much time rotting away with only himself to keep him company that his veins ran with ichor and hatred instead of blood—of course, he had learnt better once he was released from his eternal prison. His blood was very much still red, though duller in colour than it had been all those years ago.

But death itself was something he always imagined to be… liberating, somehow. Like a weight lifted off his shoulders, the chains of fate releasing him after two thousand years of being the gods’ plaything just as much as Noctis and Lunafreya were.

He hadn’t imagined it to be like this.

There was still something extremely wonderful about the silence of this beyond, but now that the stars were here the void had turned into something almost sinister to him. The way that sense did not apply to it except for where the stars led. Ardyn was fairly certain he and Noctis had been walking across the ocean that divided the Accordo archipelago from the continents Niflheim and Lucis for what felt like an eternity. It stretched on and on but there was no land in sight. There wasn’t even anything like a mountain or a deep sea trench they had to cross somehow to get where they needed to go.

Just… nothing.

Hells, he understood Noctis’ frustration. He was getting frustrated himself. But there was nothing he could do about this situation,

“You’ve been so nicely quiet for such a long time. Can’t you go back to being as silent as a dead man should be?”

“As Your Majesty commands.”

At least that annoyed huff was worth it.

* * *

She vaguely remembered this place. It wasn’t of any note; even the settlement was mostly destroyed buildings and the ones that had been rebuilt looked pathetic. But this place had once been important to the training regimen of Niflheim foot soldiers; something that Ravus had started doing after he voluntarily offered to join the army. Luna had visited him here a few times as he trained—older than most other people here, which was horrible to begin with and made even worse by the fact that several of them apparently died between her irregular visits. Unsurprisingly enough, the people who had settled here were mostly those former kids, now all still way too young to have such dire expressions.

But that was what war made of people. The conquerors conscripted children—the conquered lost heart and home. Titus Drautos had turned against King Regis because of this stuff, had become the short-lived slayer of the Lucian king. Murderer of the Oracle, Niflheim’s most trusted general; traitor.

As Luna stared at these people trying to understand why they would stick to such a horrible place, Ignis put a hand on her head.

“I understand why you’re tense. I cannot see it, of course, but I learned enough about it while we travelled through here. But we should not forget our mission.” He then turned his head towards a steep hill with the remnants of a tower further away from the settlement and these eerie faces of what had once been child soldiers training with her brother. “Something over there feels… strange.”

He did not look _worried_ this time around. Then again this place meant nothing to him, personally. Just a former imperial camp where they trained the people who slaughtered the ones he loved back in Insomnia and Lucis. Not something where a brother who had lost his smile lost what remained of his softness and came back with a heart of coal that was ready to catch fire again at any given time.

This wasn’t a part of his home continent that had once been quite a marvel to look at despite its scarce vegetation. Somewhere in the distance clouds loomed, a dreadful reminder that up ahead the climate had changed dramatically after the death of the Glacian. This part of the continent had been turned into a weapon factory full of military camps, Tenebrae had become the quiet supplier of food, and the heart of the country had turned into an icy wasteland where the people who had started the war kept working on even better ways to kill the Lucians.

This might as well have been a random hill with remnants of a war on it to Ignis, an eerie reminder that civilisation ever moved on even after their supposed fall. Solheim had burned, but in the wake of its ashes settling down the next chapter of history had begun. The tale of countries on continents, some named after the continent themselves, others not so much. Tenebrae, the cradle of those who once spoke with the gods; Lucis, birthplace of light and dark alike; Niflheim, remnants of an empire that dreamed of glory long bygone. The countries and city states that had since been swallowed up by the dominant countries; Galahd and Cartanica, Duscae and Ravatogh, the cities and islands that made up Accordo. An empire in ruins; and these were its ruins. Off the beaten path, beside where life continued as if the war had never taken place and it was the dark that had taken everything from this country and that the light had given none in return but horror upon horror now plain to see.

The sun above their heads was warm, warm as it should be on this continent. A familiar sight, even if she was not Lunafreya Nox Fleuret any longer. She was not the Oracle trying to find her brother amongst the stone-faced trainees, hard to spot despite the fact that he was older than some of them. Men of noble birth, of common birth, and in the middle of them stood a royal—but they all looked the same in the uniforms they wore, uniforms of an empire that had united them some way or another. Against their will, because of their unconditional surrender. There was no telling them apart, and Luna finally understood what had _driven_ General Glauca.

War took, and never gave. What was lost was lost forever, and giving something up meant tossing it into the abyss. While it did not excuse his actions, she finally understood the seething rage she had felt when he approached her that fateful night as she prayed to the gods that would walk beside her only to abandon her to another task after she already gave her life for them. She finally understood why Nyx Ulric had been so furious that she had thrown herself away—and how that fury made the Lucii accept his request for power. How the selfsame fury made them grant Ignis power.

But it wasn’t anger that drove this world. Noctis had not walked to face his undeserving end with anger being the guiding emotion. Even Ardyn, a creature driven by petty spite and the intense desire to avenge himself and take down those that had wronged him in the past, had let go of his anger just for a moment. And that moment had been enough for Noctis and Ardyn to see eye to eye before it was over and done. Some things were better left unsaid.

But some other things could never _be_ said. There were voices that went unheard over the noise of war; voices drowned out by the anger that had held Eos for so long before Noctis managed to loosen its grip on the planet. It was anger, perhaps even just regret, that rooted these spectres to places scattered across the planet. Cor Leonis had had his regrets that kept him around. Nyx Ulric had had his disappointment in what fate had in store for those he wished the best to.

Luna watched in awe as the in the middle of the ruined watchtower a person she did not know appeared, bowed as one did in the presence of royalty.

But as that woman looked up, Luna saw that she looked like she had been crying. The dead did not breathe; but this woman let out a sniffle of a sort before dropping into what looked like parade rest.

Ignis had returned the bow to her almost automatically, and Luna realised that she must have been a Crownsguard or a Kingsglaive. There was something tugging at the strings of her memories, something that had made the fact that she was in Insomnia even all the worse.

“It is good to see you again, Scientia. Or is that Count Scientia now?”

“Just Ignis will suffice. You are my—“

A laugh. Her voice was surprisingly lively for someone very, very dead judging from what looked like a bullet wound. “Cut that elder crap. You’re older than I was when I died. And that’s ignoring the fact you’re nobility and I’m a refugee foot soldier.”

The soldier who King Regis had dispatched to escort her to Altissia. The woman who had been killed before she ever set foot on the Niflheim continent, in some backwater place in Lucis. The first Glaive to be betrayed, the very Glaive whose death nearly turned Libertus traitor. A woman whose name Luna didn’t even know.

But instead of saying anything—there was nothing she could have said—she got on her knees and bowed her head. One of many people who had given everything for the King and the Oracle, someone who had believed that the world could be a better place when no one else believed in it. Another person who would have been mad at her for dying the way she would have had Ardyn not cut her life short.

“Lunafreya,” said Ignis, his voice soft and betraying his confusion and surprise.

“I am,” she said slowly, “sorry. I am so sorry. Yours was a life that was not supposed to end the way it did, and even had you succeeded perhaps still at the loss of your own life, it would have only served to bring along the inevitable. We have never had the pleasure of meeting when we were alive. We will not have the pleasure of meeting in death as things stand. But I am sorry. Had I been stronger, perhaps—“

The woman laughed again, still sounding like she was alive and full of emotion. Cor had been sombre, Nyx had been furious. Luna looked up, and saw that there were tears streaming down her face again, and even Ignis seemed to be taken aback by the sudden shift in energy.

“Can’t undo what’s been done. Crying over spilt milk, and so on. Was my time to go. Kinda pathetic and all that, but I guess that’s what fate had in store. Getting shot by my own comrades, just as you were always meant to die at some point, even if the Accursed sped that particular death up. Just as Nyx was meant to go out as a wildfire dying down, just as Libertus was meant to be the one to live through everything despite him usually saying he’d be the first to go out of all of us.”

Ignis looked like he wanted to ask something, but he did not dare to speak. Those of the Glaive who had survived had not once mentioned what had happened in Insomnia. Not even the one who had spent their energy on trying to remember their past had spoken about Insomnia with anyone but the Glaive; perhaps an odd passing mention to someone like Iris or Cor but that was it. Luna—Diana—had spent a good amount of time listening to these men and women who all donned the same uniform, had been there when the remnants of the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive decided that perhaps it would be best to wear the same uniform for easier identification in the field. It had been a rather touching gesture, all things considered. The people who had mostly lived in the Crown City their whole lives actively asking for the uniforms of those that were often scorned as refugee scum. Not that Diana had understood how grand a gesture it had been in the end.

The advisor likely had no idea what on earth this woman was talking about. Had he even heard of her death before he left the city with Noctis?

How this woman was able to stand there smiling despite the tears running down her face was beyond Luna. Hells, she hadn’t even known that she was close to Nyx and Libertus—but now that she thought about it, Nyx’s subdued reaction to her asking about the warrior who had been supposed to escort her to Altissia…. It made sense. Libertus’ actions made sense. Just as General Glauca’s actions had started making sense.

War never gave. War only took and took until naught remained.

Luna stood back up slowly. “Despite all, I wish it had never come to this. I would have… I feel like we would have gotten along well on our way to Altissia to meet with Noctis. And it is… it is unfair that you were a sacrifice for the greater good when you could have easily contributed to the greater good alive.”

The woman closed her eyes. And though the dead did not breathe, she sniffled again as the wind picked up. She saluted once more, this time looking rather proud despite the fact she was still crying.

“Oh, and. The… the hairpin.” Her eyes went wide when Luna mentioned it. “After Nyx destroyed the tracking properties of it, I carried it with me. Across the country, to Altissia. I did not wear it at the Altar of the Tidemother, but it must have at least returned to Niflheim with my brother when he brought my sparse belongings with him. You never made it to Tenebrae. But you did travel the rest of Eos.”

The Glaive stared at her for a minute. The sun was so warm, and this place was so very desolate with the abandoned factories and drilling grounds littered across the plains. Then, at long last, she stopped crying.

“One hell of a journey, huh?”

“Nowhere near as hellish as what Count Scientia here travelled, but yes. I would call it one hell of a journey.”

“One hell of a life we all had or have, as Libertus would put it. He was always better at saying pretty or deep things.” For a moment it looked like she was considering reaching out to Luna, but she remained in her parade rest. “I got one request before you send me over to where Nyx has got to be waiting for me and my lame behind to arrive. I know you gotta sing and all that, and I’ll let you without putting up a fight ‘cause the next one’s sure as hell not gonna let you that easily. But, like, princess? Count Ignis? Would you mind telling me… Libertus? Is he alright?”

After his almost icy silence, Ignis cleared his throat. Luna hadn’t paid much attention to it because she had expected it, but his eyes were glowing once more. The fire was barely visible in the sunlight.

“Leading the rebuilding effort in Galahd, Glaive Altius. His first and foremost project was building a place for families to stay, and named it after you. Correspondence might be sparse between him and I, but Gladiolus mentioned that Crowe’s Rest has become a full-fledged settlement in Galahd by now.”

Her smile cracked. Her expression went from a sad smile to what looked like a silent agonised scream of pain and she sunk to her knees.

“That’s my guy in two pieces. My… my brother. He’s done it.”

Luna almost wanted to start crying there as well. But as she watched Ignis walk up to the Glaive to put a hand on her shoulder, she realised that she missed her brother. Even the one that war had destroyed.

“Yeah, I’m… I’m fine. Thanks.” She sniffled, tried wiping the tears off her face. It wasn’t a pretty cry—it was as ugly as it should have been all along. She still couldn’t stop. “Say, Princess Lunafreya? I gotta tell Nyx. Would you mind sending me over?”

Luna shook her head. “Not at all. Crowe Altius, was it?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s meet again under a kinder fate one day.”

“Deal.”

* * *

This whole place was consumed by an aura of melancholy. Noctis had no idea where the stars had led him in the end, but with Ardyn quiet once again it had become easier to follow them. When he arrived, he quite literally could not pinpoint an equivalent place in the real world. This seemed randomly chosen at best and meaningful to Luna or Ignis on the other side at worst—he truly did not want them to go somewhere where their very much beating hearts ached.

But to him, this position meant nothing. It wasn’t even close to where Ardyn had tricked him into pushing Prompto off the train.

Before he could mull over that some more, the flickering blue light that did not belong in this place started pulsing. Noctis stepped back a little to ensure not getting crushed if something large manifested again; but he watched quite in awe as the flame started growing and changing form. It sprouted wings; hideous wings that spoke of dark rather than freedom. It wasn’t as deformed as some other Daemons were, but it was undeniably something grotesque that he had managed to avoid seeing up close. Ardyn meanwhile started frowning as he saw that—before Noctis could ask, the man had summoned that strange scythe again.

“Artificially created in the Niflheim laboratories, these things were not meant to be anything but a substitute for airships. How… strange.”

“And that means…?”

A snort. “Durable. Robust. A quick blast on a weak point won’t topple this thing.”

The Daemon let out a growl as it started moving about, its wings beating erratically as it tried to hit Noctis. He kept phasing, carefully ensuring that he did not dig into his magical reserves too much. He kept his gaze focused on Ardyn. He had not used that weapon in any capacity back in Insomnia, and its existence intrigued Noctis quite a lot. Had that insufferable bastard not used his full powers against him? Had all the suffering and agony been for nothing?

“Though I would not have expected one of these to pop up. They weren’t exactly… finished. Prototypes did escape, but flying Daemons were exceedingly rare to begin with and they are not good predators. Or fighters for that part.”

Ardyn had had his hand in creating most of the non-natural Daemons that haunted the world. Noctis had only asked about it after they had managed to take down a Magitek Engine, and Gladio had answered in a low voice that quite a lot of things escaped from the laboratories in Niflheim that were never supposed to see the light of day. Prototypes, as Ardyn had just called them, that tore into the landscapes and killed more people than the naturally occurring ones did. Machines that were based on Daemonic energies and the like that gained something that resembled sentience or base instinct and went after humans when there was nothing else left to do in the dark.

This thing did not look like a machine at least.

Ardyn moved. Noctis had not seen the man hop around as lightly as he did now; everything in Insomnia had been heavy blows and heavier words. This Ardyn, with this strange weapon in his hands, seemed to dance around the Daemon whose wings were beating in a desperate attempt to either swat away the bothersome human or to gain some height. But Ardyn not even once properly looked at this thing as he seemingly danced around it, raining strike upon strike on this thing that had no name as he mentioned between strikes. The prototype went down with a heavy dull crash upon the glittering ground in this sea of stars, and Noctis realised that he had not moved at all since Ardyn had begun his assault.

The man landed with a grunt, stumbled a little when the landing put too much weight on one side. Of all things, Ardyn suffered from the same weak legs that Noctis’ entire bloodline had had to varying degrees. Of all possible things.

He dismissed that weapon, and Noctis lunged forward. Rammed himself into the man, toppled them both over. When Ardyn hit the ground face first, Noctis jumped back to his feet and slammed one foot down between the man’s shoulders.

“What the _fuck._ What in the god damn. You know all this shit and then you _tear the thing apart._ Were you fucking joking around in Insomnia? Was I not worthy of being properly fought?”

Something cracked in the distance. It sounded like a building coming apart, reminiscent of those horrible sounds that accompanied the howls of the Hydraean back in Altissia when he had tried to fight her with his own powers. Before Luna decided that instead of saving herself she would save Noctis not once but twice. But Noctis didn’t care and dug his heel into Ardyn’s back. The man didn’t even fight back properly.

“Answer me, Ardyn. Were you using your full powers in Insomnia?”

An ugly laugh bubbled up from beneath his foot. It joined the dissonant cracking sounds for a moment; a cacophony that hurt Noctis’ ears more than anything else he had heard before he died. “You think ten years is a long time? It is nothing to me,” he repeated, though this time the angry tone from their fight in Insomnia was gone. “You honed your skills for ten years in the Crystal. Unable to move, unable to escape the Draconian and the fact that it was going to be your duty to _die_ for all those fools you ever loved. Ten. Lousy. Years.” Another bout of ugly laughter. “Try two thousand, unable to move, unable to do anything but count down to the next time your heart stops beating, begging it is the last time. Have you ever had your flesh rot around you because of inflamed wounds? Not even a skilled Healer can heal flesh that rotted away. But instead of rotting away enough to loosing these hooks and chains, to fall off after hundreds of years being locked into the same place—the gods bar me from moving on, and keep my body from falling off. Of _course_ I was not using the full extent of my power. I would have crushed you like a bothersome gnat.”

Noctis jumped backwards just in time when Ardyn finished speaking. Where he had stood not a moment ago, a fountain of what looked like scalding water erupted from the ground. Ardyn meanwhile stood back up completely unbothered by everything, went as far as even dusting himself off—as if dust existed in this place.

Crack.

The ground trembled and Ardyn narrowed his eyes.

A crack spread across the floor, splitting the reflections of the stars in half, made the still void beyond move. If Noctis’ heart still beat, it would have skipped a few when the ground shifted. Jagged rock that did not reflect the stars above cut out from the cracks and shifts.

“Oh, I could have destroyed you. And then the accursed Crystal of yours would have simply chosen another to defy me. Time and time again until I grow weary enough to give up, or until someone or something rises that is strong enough to destroy me. How would you have liked getting smashed and having your liar friend Ignis take up the mantle? Or the jittery Prompto, the stalwart Gladiolus. I _hated_ it.” The roar of the ground tearing open overpowered whatever Ardyn said next. Noctis dodged a chunk of colourless earth. “And it isn’t like you used your personal weapon against me! Your blade stayed put in favour of the one your father bore—why should I use mine when my lousy family’s weapons work just as fine?”

The void beyond changed rapidly. Hills but not mountains formed. The world started to take shape but remained as drained of colour as before, grey earth and even greyer plains. Not a single plant formed, and water remained absent as well. Where water would have gone the ground remained black and solid, with the stars up above reflected in that dry void.

And in the middle of that scenery stood Ardyn, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face.

“Technicalities all aside, I have a feeling I know where to go next. Whether you give a damn or not—I surely do not, but I would prefer not being stuck in a world that is barely formed.”

Noctis growled at him, made a point in summoning his weapons to his side and keeping them suspended in the air around him. Ready to strike at any time should Ardyn try something funny.

“Well, where are we going then, asshole?”

“Gralea.”

**Author's Note:**

> written for nano 2018


End file.
